European-based BUX has recently announced that it has raised $80 million from a group of top-tier investors; backing its mission to become the region’s most prominent neo-broker.
The funding round was led by Prosus Ventures and Tencent, with participation from additional new investors ABN Amro Ventures, Citius, Optiver, and Endeit Capital. Existing investors HV Capital and Velocity Capital Fintech Ventures also participated in the round, showing their commitment to accelerate BUX’s strong, continued growth.
Having recently celebrated the arrival of their 500,000th customer, BUX will utilise this investment as an additional impetus to expand its investment app BUX Zero.
BUX Zero was created with the intention of making commission-free investing accessible, intuitive, and affordable for both first-time and existing investors; allowing them to invest in a large suite of shares or ETFs that they really care about.
To officially announce the launch of their new investment app in the most contemporary and accessible way possible, BUX headed to Clubhouse, the drop-in audio chat platform, unveiling the product on the 22nd of April. The announcement was well attended by members from around the world.
BUX Zero has identified its target audience as Europe’s millennial population and hopes that the development of an app-based platform, alongside the state of commission-free investing, will draw a younger customer base to the platform.
In parallel with the funding round, founder and CEO Nick Bortot will hand over the helm of the company to its current COO Yorick Naeff. Nick will remain involved with BUX as a member of the non-executive board.
Nick touched on how the new appointment of Yorick will aid the platform in achieving this feat, stating “In this growth phase, you need to talk execution. I’ve worked with Yorick for seven years very closely, and he’s like an execution machine. He’s a natural-born leader, so I’m very happy to hand over the position of CEO to him. We’re targeting millennials and even people who are younger, I’m a bit older myself, so I think that’s another good reason to hand over the helm of the company to him. So we’re super happy that Yorick is becoming our new CEO.”
When pressed by an audience member on how the platform plans to retain millennial interest, Nick added “If you have a car, you also won’t let a person without a driving license drive that car, right? So I think we have a duty of care, and one we take very seriously. This is also one of the reasons why we’re not just focused on gamification, but to really make investing more sophisticated, more professional, and also to have appropriate access for all the different types of products and asset classes that we offer. We have educational content blogs to support clients and we’re working on a very disruptive feature, to make sure that people really apply dollar-cost averaging opening to an account with periodic deposits, periodic investments, and a well-balanced portfolio.”
“This has historically been the best way to build wealth for the future,” Nick continues, “by applying dollar-cost averaging and by really making sure you spread out your risks over different asset classes and buckets of shares; especially ETFs. We want to support that, and we will make sure that we provide our customers with all the necessary support and educational content for them to make the right decisions.”
“Younger generations in Europe now realise that investing is one of the few viable ways left to create a stable financial future,” added Yorick Naeff, BUX’s new CEO. “With this new funding round, BUX will continue to spearhead innovation by implementing advanced features to further shape the future of how Europeans invest. We are extremely grateful to have top-tier investors like Prosus Ventures and Tencent on board to support us in our mission.”
“Traditional financial market investing comes with a lot of friction and we firmly believe in the democratisation of access to financial services for the next generation of investors. The existing solutions are expensive, complex, and not designed for younger generations,” said Sandeep Bakshi, Head of Europe Investments for Prosus Ventures. He added, “BUX has built the next generation of investing services that are low cost, convenient and intuitive for even the newest investor, while covering the full spectrum of investment options, including cryptocurrencies. They have already experienced impressive growth and are the best-positioned neo-broker to scale across Europe and beyond.”
“We are excited about backing BUX as they are the leading neo-broker in Europe and have been able to build a platform that is sustainable and scalable. BUX is the only neo-broker in Europe that offers zero-commission investing without being dependent on kickbacks or payments for order flow. This ensures that its interests are fully aligned with its customers. We will support BUX in its journey of pursuing consistent growth for the years to come”, said Alex Leung, Assistant GM at Tencent, Strategic Development.
Royal Park Partners acted as an exclusive financial advisor to BUX and its shareholders throughout the transaction.
Demand for BUX Zero Skyrockets
In the past three months alone, BUX Zero has more than doubled its assets under management. In addition, the number of active users grew six-fold throughout the year. With interest rates at all-time lows and struggling pension systems, there is a fast-growing appetite to start investing especially amongst the younger generations.
Having successfully launched BUX Zero in Germany, France, Austria, and Belgium in the past year, Europe’s fastest-growing neo-broker will continue its international expansion throughout 2021, solidifying its leadership position.
