Easy Equities good or bad?

Dear fellow Easy investor

There has been an overwhelming response to our proposed launch of securities lending. Most of it fairly targeted at the simple fact that we could have done a better job of handling the communications and allowing you to opt-in rather than out.

Those of you that know me and have lived alongside EasyEquities for a while, know that its not in our DNA to do anything that isn’t in the best interest of our clients’ march towards financial freedom. However, you will also know that when we get things wrong, we listen, learn, pivot and return stronger.

The same is true of securities lending. So while we are cancelling the launch of securities lending for now, expect it back in your inbox when my team and I are 100% happy that we have done the best job at alleviating your concerns and making the entire experience easier.

Just a little insight from me into why we were so excited about the launch and why then, in the result, rushed it.

Securities lending is the reserve of the very wealthy and has never been made available to retail clients on this large scale. If you do it properly, it’s a great way to extract more value out of your portfolio without increasing the risk.

In this regard, we spent over a year negotiating and contracting the best possible outcome for our clients both in terms of balancing the risk and returns and in the result, created the same resilience in our contracts that your pension funds rely on.

All the revenue flowing from the securities lending would have been split 20% to the institutional partner, who essentially lends out the securities and manages the risk and return, 48% to EE clients for their stock and 32% to EasyEquities for managing the tech and platform on which the securities lending runs.

A well-diversified portfolio of listed securities would earn around 0.70% a year from securities lending income. With this in mind and the fact that we are limiting the lending to 60% of your portfolio, the total revenue from securities lending would be on average 0.42% (0.7% x 60%). Of that, clients would therefore earn an extra 0.20% (0.42% x 48%) on their portfolio per year.

Out of interest, that’s roughly 30% of what our clients are spending on transaction fees a year. So, in essence, your costs would be reduced by 30%. Reducing costs is the only certain return you’ll ever get from investing and that’s why this was such a big deal for us, a way to reduce your costs by increasing your income and effectively guaranteeing a greater future return.

However, securities lending is a complex part of the financial system and we haven’t done a good enough job of explaining it all - my sincere apologies.

It's back to the drawing board and if securities lending is still something you don’t want once we’ve done a better job of explaining it, then you have my assurance that we will not launch it - its really that easy!

Regards and thank you for your incredible engagement today. My team and I remain committed to setting our hundreds of thousands of clients as you all continue on your financial journeys.
 
What are they doing here ? paying a small fee so someone can use the borrowed stock to be able to short trade?
 
So they "insure" you at 115% the value of the shares and if they cannot give you the shares back they give you the money?

Does that trigger a capital gains event?
 
Let me know if I missed it, have you guys seen this?
EasyEquities just updated their Terms & Conditions to allow them to take ownership of your securities and transfer them out of your account and lend it to someone else for a fee. Here's what it means for you - including the rights you have in this situation [Thread] #BankerX
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https://twitter.com/x/status/1285864821485961222

Was sent in an email with subject: "We're updating our platform AND our Ts and Cs <<first_name>>"
 
sandwitch said:
I came in on the tail end of this :cautious:. EE really hasn't impressed me this week. At all. And what makes it worse is that I'm one of the schmucks who unsubscribed to EE's mailing list and I only got to hear about EE's script lending implementation on My Broadband.
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That's another thing, unsubscribing from marketing/spam shouldn't preclude you from important communication about your money!
 
I've been with EE for a few years, as they met my criteria of a basic and cheap way to buy etfs. Haven't really looked into anything since. Those of you that are cheesed off with EE since this latest palava. Who would you guys consider moving your portfolios to?
 
Another correction on my account. This time foreign dividend payout...

My ohhhh my, a really kak week for EE
 
Oh look... their platform is down again because of load "their dev mavericks are looking into it". It came back up but share details aren't loading.

Before you sign up with EasyEquities and invest a huge amount of money you care about on the platform, ask yourself this: If there is an event like a crash or surge, will this platform allow you to react quick enough.

The answer is no. Not in it's current state.
 
Hamster said:
Oh look... their platform is down again because of load "their dev mavericks are looking into it". It came back up but share details aren't loading.

Before you sign up with EasyEquities and invest a huge amount of money you care about on the platform, ask yourself this: If there is an event like a crash or surge, will this platform allow you to react quick enough.

The answer is no. Not in it's current state.
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Well, you get what you pay for. It's the cheapest, so you can't expect the best platform.
 
handyman007 said:
Well, you get what you pay for. It's the cheapest, so you can't expect the best platform.
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Feature wise, no, but I don't think it is too much to ask in a world of AWS and Azure that your software stays up and running during a traffic surge whether it is users or data feeds.

Ninety One looks good until you see the TER's on the funds. Some are 2% :(
 
Hamster said:
Feature wise, no, but I don't think it is too much to ask in a world of AWS and Azure that your software stays up and running during a traffic surge whether it is users or data feeds.

Ninety One looks good until you see the TER's on the funds. Some are 2% :(
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I couldn't agree more on keeping the site up & running. It's quite ridiculous that at every small surge in activity the platform goes into maintenance mode. Almost every night this week it's been in "maintenance mode".

Why is there so much "maintenance" on a production site. Shouldn't all these bugs be sorted out on staging/testing environment
 
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Hamster said:
They're not even in charge of their own hardware...
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I get the frustrations with them being down, I was also disappoint when I tried to log in and got denied. But, they are a financial service company, not an ISP / data center. Talk about nitpicking.

handyman007 said:
Well, you get what you pay for. It's the cheapest, so you can't expect the best platform.
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This says it all, yet people don't seem to put two and two together.

Don't mistake me for trying to say them being down is right, it isn't. But sheesh, the expectations are sometimes a bit ridiculous.
 
wcm said:
Why is there so much "maintenance" on a production site. Shouldn't all these bugs be sorted out on staging/testing environment
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They're not using a cloud provider like AWS or their own Tin but a smaller hosting provider which means maintenance could be anything from a software bug on their side to an unplugged network cable at the provider.
 
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