The neobroker Justtrade, which is targeted at active traders, is the result of two securities professionals founding a company together. After working at Onvista, Comdirect and Bank 24, Michael Bußhaus and Ralf Oetting came together and entered the beta phase with their trading platform in 2019, followed by the market launch in 2020. They arrived just in time to take advantage of the trading boom that began during the coronavirus pandemic. „We chose Hamburg-based Sutor Bank as our custodian bank. It was clear from the very first meeting that it was a good fit – and of course we benefited from the fact that we both know exactly how securities trading works,“ says Ralf Oetting in an interview with Börsen-Zeitung.

Securities trading via Justtrade differs in setup from what other neobrokers do, which is usually only via one exchange. „We offer investors a choice of three exchanges and seven over-the-counter trading centres, which means that customers don't have to accept the price of a single exchange, but can choose the best price for their order,“ says Bußhaus. All trading centres are listed alphabetically in the order screen, with the best price for a specific order highlighted.

Justtrade's on-exchange trading runs via LS Exchange, Quotrix and Tradegate Exchange, as well as over-the-counter via JP Morgan, UBS, Morgan Stanley, Vontobel, DZ Bank, Société Générale and L&S. With the „Quote Request Order“, an execution can take place exactly at the selected price, which protects against unpleasant surprises during order execution, especially in turbulent market phases, says Bußhaus. The process chain controlled by Justtrade is completely cloud-based.

The broking industry had to overcome turbulence at the beginning of April when trading was not available with some providers, partly because it was not possible to access securities accounts in the apps. BaFin took this as an opportunity to write to all brokers to find out who had which problems, and what additional requirements would have to be met. The two managing directors of Justtrade state that although there was also quite a spike upwards for them, everything went smoothly. „We have just answered the BaFin letter and sent it back,“ says Oetting. Bußhaus suspects that a bottleneck when importing real-time prices into the app could be the cause of problems with securities account access at other brokers.

The two founders (and owners) do not want to disclose exact customer numbers and settlement volumes, they only say this much: a five-digit number of trades are processed per day for a six-digit number of customers. It is clear that the trading set-up could do much more. „We target active traders who see opportunities and execute 50 to 250 trades per year. The market analysis shows that around 2 million German self-decision-makers belong to our target group; for Europe as a whole, this would be around 8 million customers with around 270 million transactions per year. And that's where we want to step up our efforts in market development,“ says Oetting.

Previously primarily self-financed („bootstrapping“), the two founders now want to open up to a strategic shareholder who could finance the accelerated growth with their capital – Justtrade has not attracted much attention with advertising to date. Traditional venture funds from the USA are not the focus, as they are always calibrated for customer growth, but sustainable transaction growth is the priority for the founders and they do not want to move away from this approach. A European strategist who agrees with the founders' preferences and shares the idea of controlled scaling would be a good fit.

What Justtrade could do better: According to Bußhaus, the data showed that there was an average saving of 4 euros on the exchange price fixing of the connected trading centres, as is possible via the platform with its options for order execution. „This clearly overcompensates for the 1 euro third-party costs that we charge.“ This message now needs to be spread.

The two founders hold out the prospect of a new app version soon, which will primarily fulfil the need signalled by customers for additional information about a share that is being considered for a trade. The Frankfurt-based company also wants to become more active in the B2B business, where it enables other providers to offer trading functionalities in the same way as fintech Upvest. The Bison app with securities trading is currently in the portfolio. By expanding the B2B business, more volume can be brought onto the trading machine, says Oetting. However, the B2C business remains the primary focus.