Swedish digital share dealing and fund trading

2011 the year of the upgrade

20 February 2012 | Share dealing | Alexander Hertzell

Following a recent market update our researchers have found that although the Swedish digital share dealing and fund trading market offers little development in terms of radical innovation, there is an increased focus on improvements and upgrades of existing services.

The general practice within Internet banking has for some time been to provide customers with the choice from a range of share dealing packages. Within the competitive environment Swedbank has stood out when it comes to presenting their alternative offerings, and the associated prices. This informative approach has similarly been adopted, as well as adapted, by Nordea on their own platform. By providing easily accessible information on their overview page – "what other customers are buying" – they are helping their clients keep up-to-date with the best-selling funds.

In line with the growing importance of social networks Skandia Bank & Försäkring have introduced a new Facebook page called ‘Mäklarbordet’. Users who 'like' the page will receive news on market activities and daily reports through Facebook feeds, and any topic-related questions can be raised on the Facebook wall.

There has been a lot of movement towards smartphone applications for Android and more recently Windows Phone 7. Danske Bank has updated their mobile app with an improved market overview and users are now able to trade on different markets. It also allows monitoring of the market through SMS and email alerts.

Saxo Bank, who previously only had mobile web, have now joined the ‘smartphone-group’ (Danske Bank, Nordea, Swedbank, Avanza and Nordnet) leaving Skandia Bank & Försäkring and Länsförsäkringar behind as the only banks who are only offering trading within Internet Banking.

Though the future for many markets will most likely involve tablets the share and fund trading functions are still limited. At this point, Handelsbanken stand alone on the tablet platform being the only bank to offer monitoring of both funds and shares. They have however already established themselves as visionaries taking banking news articles and blogs a step further with the launch of their web channel ‘Handelsbanken TV’ where they provide relevant video content to the public.

With these changes in mind we will keep a close eye on further developments and the continuing progress within the field anticipating some innovative updates to take place during the year.