A 22 minute watch.

You most likely associate eToro with forex, cryptos, and millennials, but as a company it is striving for much more than this, having recently launched its foray into stock trading. Iqbal Gandham, chief of eToro’s UK business, chats to Lee Robertson on the importance of accessibility, information, product, and time.  

Addressing technological change in the industry, Iqbal outlines that it’s often “easier to start with a blank sheet of paper” and that upgrading legacy systems is often the slow option.

With millennials a key part of their client base, he advises that small absolute numbers of investible assets means tech and scalability is key to monetisation, with questionable technology in some fintechs today.

Iqbal chats about the “crypto winter” when values plummeted across the spectrum, ands that rather than running for the hills, his clients actually moved to diversify into other assets, such as ETFs.

“Engaging with humans” is important to the platform and Iqbal points to using thematic ideas such as trading around Brexit volatility as a way of educating investors on events that move markets and why.

Finally, he answers the question of blockchain and whether it will fundamentally shift the architecture of markets as much as observers might expect.