How Alpcot is making investments fairer and simpler with open banking
Swedish startup Alpcot launched its digital platform in 2019 to bring transparency to the online investment industry by developing a fund platform where customers pay no hidden fees. Here’s how they’re leveraging open banking to deliver a seamless and personalised user experience – and provide up to 50% discount on fund fees, so the returns can go right back into customers' savings and investments.
Swedish startup Alpcot is increasing transparency in investments with a digital fund platform where customers pay no hidden fees.
Using account aggregation, Alpcot gets a holistic view of customers finances so they can offer personalised advice.
By leveraging open banking technology, Alpcot can automate many processes. This lowers their overhead and operating costs so they can offer competitive deals.
Most consumers today have their investments, savings accounts, mortgages, and pension accounts spread across different financial institutions. Björn Bringes, the CEO and co-founder of Alpcot, could clearly see the problem for consumers today: it’s increasingly difficult for people to have a holistic overview of their financial situation and see all the hidden fees they’re paying across the board – especially when it comes to investments and pensions.
When a consumer invests money in mutual funds or pension accounts, the broker receives up to 50% in commission through the fund fee. The customer pays this fee, while the broker keeps the commission. Alpcot doesn’t think this is fair.
More money, lower fees
Alpcot decided to take up the challenge to meet the demands of consumers by creating a fund platform to help them take back control of their finances and grow their investments.
To get started, clients simply use BankID (Sweden’s identification standard) to login and get a 360° view of their finances on the platform. This includes all their bank accounts, mortgages, pensions, stocks and securities accounts, as well as the fees they’re paying on a detailed level.
Alpcot then runs an analysis based on the clients’ financial situation to show how to best reach their savings goals. This can include help with lowering their fees or investing in the 1,000+ funds available on Alpcot’s digital platform – with up to 50% discount on the fund fee.
How it works is simple. Alpcot just refunds the entire commission straight back to the customer, providing up to 50% discount on the fund fee. Alpcot just charges a monthly subscription fee, making them a cheaper option than the commission-taking competitors.
A small difference in fees makes a large impact on investments in the long run. Alpcot has attracted about 7,000 clients in its short history and estimates that clients can end up saving around 120,000 SEK (over €11,000) in lower fund fees.
Alpcot has leveraged open banking technology to automate almost their entire process so they can keep their overhead and operating costs low - and keep very low fund fees to offer a much better deal than their competitors.
Using open banking to power better experiences
Using Tink’s account aggregation, Alpcot retrieves up-to-date and accurate financial information straight from the user’s bank accounts with just a few clicks. This can include transaction data, savings, mortgages, loans, and investments. After retrieving the data, Alpcot’s cost analysis tool goes over the user’s portfolio to calculate how it will develop over time, and calculate the impact of the discounted fund fees.
If the client decides to move their investments to Alpcot, they can swiftly send all the transfer details with the press of a button – Tink automatically fills in the data for them. Without this, the customer would have to log in to their bank app to collect account and ISIN numbers themselves, and then input all of that into the transfer agreements. Needless to say, that makes a lot of room for typos, drop-offs, and frustration.
‘The rich detail in the information from Tink has made it possible for Alpcot to develop a market-leading cost analysis and account transfer offer. Since the launch of the offering just a few months ago, more than 600 clients have used the tool to analyse their portfolios, which has resulted in some 250 account transfers to Alpcot,’ said Björn.
With easy access to open banking technology, anyone can create the financial services of the future. To find out more about building on the Tink Console, check out our handy getting started guide.
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