Investment platform Lightyear announces a “record” year of investment activity on the platform.
Seeing nearly 20% month-on-month growth in assets under management (AUM), the appetite for investing – despite another rollercoaster year for the public markets – remains high. In 2023, the company also “increased its headcount by 45%, taking the team size to over 50 people, released 8 new products and launched in 2 new countries.”
2023 was the year of cash
With the GBP interest rate reaching “a 15-year high in September 2023 after 14 consecutive rate rises, customers across the UK looked for ways to make their money work harder with better interest rates.”
Lightyear saw the average UK customer portfolio “made up of 26% uninvested cash over 2023, compared to 18% in 2022.”
The platform gives interest on “all uninvested cash with no limits, tracking the live interest rates and passing value back to customers minus a flat 0.75% fee.”
The launch of BlackRock Money Market Funds (MMFs) “on Lightyear in August 2023 – returning 5.42% yield for GBP (gross) – increases the percentage of cash or cash-equivalent investments in an average Lightyear customer portfolio (across all 22 countries) to 57%, demonstrating further desire to have idle and accessible cash working harder than average high street bank accounts. (Yield as of 3/1/24, subject to daily fluctuations and fees).”
Over half of UK customers (54%) have “a mixed portfolio, holding a combination of interest-earning cash with stocks and/or funds.”
The average UK Lightyear portfolio return “in 2023 was 29%, beating the S&P 500 by 5%.”
In 2023, the investment platform “saw continued interest in technology, with Tesla, Apple and Amazon as the top three most popular stocks on Lightyear across the UK and Europe.”
The most popular fund in the UK “was VUSA (the Vanguard S&P 500), with IUSA (iShares Core S&P 500) and IUKD (iShares UK Dividend) following close behind.”
While technology topped the list once again, Lightyear saw “increased portfolio diversification across other sectors in 2023 with more customer assets invested in instruments across the consumer cyclical sector (discretionary items consumers can afford to buy more of during a booming economy) and services (finance, insurance and more) than 2022. Another sector that gained interest this year was healthcare, making up part of a portfolio for over 20% of Lightyear customers holding stocks.”
Lightyear continued to “release highly requested new products and features at speed including a web platform, exchange-traded commodities, stop orders, money market funds and business investment accounts.”
The company also added hundreds of new instruments “across the year including German stocks and ETFs, the IBEX 35 (Spain’s largest public companies) and UK stocks on the London Stock Exchange.”
The theme of international expansion “from 2022 (which saw Lightyear launch across the 19 Eurozone countries) continued into 2023 with further country expansion into Croatia and Hungary.”
Nicole Quinn, Partner at Lightspeed says:
“2023 was a challenging year for companies to navigate and despite this, Lightyear had a record year.”
Martin Sokk, Co-founder and CEO at Lightyear, adds:
“Our goal this year is to dive deeper on a country specific basis to make sure Lightyear is the go to place to build future wealth and invest.”