Scalable Capital clients save with ETFs - Insights into the investment behaviour of online broker users

Munich, 13 June 2022. The majority of the investors in the Scalable Broker invest in ETFs and use regular savings plans; the largest group among them is "Generation Y". This is the result of an analysis of the in-house data of Scalable Capital, one of the leading digital investment platforms in Europe. For the first time, Scalable Capital provides insights into the investment behaviour of its users and sheds light on how they invest their money and what characterises the typical investor.

"The majority of our customers invest by the book and rely on diversification and long-term asset accumulation with ETFs," says Erik Podzuweit, co-founder and CEO of Scalable Capital, describing one of the key findings. "The top 9 most popular names are all globally diversified ETFs; the first stock only places 10th with Apple. The investment behaviour of young investors is particularly striking. Our data shows that they have even more ETFs in their portfolios than the older age groups, thus investing even more 'sensibly'. Generation Z is not a generation of 'gamblers', but of responsible and forward-looking savers."

The most important results of the analysis:

"Generation Y" is most keen to invest - and more and more women are investing

  • The largest group of investors (32 percent) is between 27 and 34 years old and can be classified as "Generation Y".
  • Slightly less strongly represented are investors of "Generation X", who are between 35 and 48 years old (around 27 percent). This is followed by the "Generation Z" age group, 18- to 26-year-old investors (23 percent).
  • The percentage of women among investors has grown strongly in the last two years. When the broker was launched in the summer of 2020, only 7 percent of investors were female - now women account for almost a quarter (24 percent).

ETFs are the clear favorite: Two out of three investors invest in exchange-traded funds; young investors invest the most responsibly

  • ETFs are by far the most popular asset class at the Scalable Broker: Two thirds of clients (66 percent) invest in exchange-traded funds that track stock market indices such as the MSCI World.
  • The younger the investor, the more popular this form of investment. While almost three quarters of the 18 to 26 age group invest in ETFs, the share of the over 65s is only 60 percent.
  • In addition, women (75 percent) invest more frequently in ETFs than men (63 percent).
  • Stocks only come second among the most popular investments in the Scalable Broker in all age groups (31 percent of invested assets).
  • In contrast to the distribution of ETFs, older investors in particular invest in stocks. 36 percent of the over-65s invest in individual stocks, while not even a quarter of the 18- to 26-year-olds do so (23 percent).
  • A closer look at the types of ETF investments shows that women invest 30 percent more assets in sustainable investments than men.
  • Almost two thirds (64 percent) of the money invested in ETFs goes into diversified indices, 18 percent into sustainable investments and 7 percent into thematic ETFs.
  • These are followed by factor ETFs (5 percent), sector ETFs (4 percent), bond ETFs (2 percent) and commodities (0.3 percent).

Every second client saves regularly with savings plans

  • The attractive commission-free savings plan offer with over 2,000 ETFs and stocks is actively used: Every second customer saves regularly - among female investors it is even higher at almost 60 percent.
  • On average, investors have at least three savings plans and save around 470 euros per month.
  • In the case of savings plans, ETFs are even more clearly ahead of stocks and account for 91 percent of the savings volume.

About Scalable Capital

Scalable Capital is a leading digital investment platform in Europe that makes investing easy and affordable for everyone. With the Scalable Broker, customers can trade shares, ETFs, funds, cryptocurrencies and derivatives independently and thus compile their own portfolio. They can have their savings professionally invested via the digital wealth management service. More than 500,000 customers already use the services.

Scalable Capital was founded in 2014 and is already active in Germany, the UK, France, Spain, Italy and Austria. The investment firm, which is supervised by BaFin and the Bundesbank, has more than 6 billion euros on its platform. In addition to its business for private customers, the company develops B2B solutions. Its long-standing partners include ING, Barclays Bank in the UK, the robo-advisor Oskar and the Santander Group in Spain. Scalable Capital employs more than 400 people at its offices in Munich, Berlin and London. Together with the founding and management team around Erik Podzuweit and Florian Prucker, they work to enable everyone to become an investor.

For further information, please visit: www.scalable.capital/en

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Media contact

Ina Froehner
Scalable Capital
Head of Communications
+49.160.94.43.59.32