German Broker flatexDEGIRO Sees 55% Jump in 2021 Client Accounts

flatexDEGIRO, a German retail online broker, has published some key performance metrics for 2021, showing impressive growth across all parameters. In addition, it turned to be a record year for the broker.

According to the official numbers, the number of customer accounts on the brokerage platform increased by 55 percent to 2.06 million, with 2.04 million individual traders. The broker ended 2020 with 1.33 million customer accounts.

Additionally, the German platform successfully retained the majority of its existing customers with a rate of around 97 percent, which is another important and impressive parameter with growing competition in the brokerage industry.

Moreover, the massive influx of retail traders spiked the trading demand on the platform. It settled 91 million transactions throughout 2021, which is 21 percent higher than the previous year.

“In 2021, we have marked another record year,” the CEO of flatexDEGIRO, Frank Niehage said in a statement. “Even more important, we have also laid the foundations for future exponential customer growth.”

To retain this growth trajectory, the company is now heavily investing in its trading platform . It has upgraded its infrastructure and optimized its pricing structure, even introducing zero-commission services for certain markets and products.

“We have invested heavily into IT to offer the highest stability and security on our platform, while further enhancing the usability and relevance of our trading app with the launch of 'next 3.0'. We have expanded trading opportunities for our DEGIRO customers with early and late trading and our unique product partnerships with global leading investment banks,” Niehage added.

A Bullish Outlook

The broker is now optimistic about its performance in 2022. It is expecting to gain a customer base between 2.7 million and 2.9 million over the year while putting the expected transaction settlement between 95 million and 115 million.

Muhamad Chahrour, the CFO at flatexDEGIRO and the CEO at DEGIRO, said: “The last quarters were characterized by rather average market volatility, the absence of external drivers like at the beginning of the year. Nevertheless, we continued to grow structurally our customer base in this normalized environment much faster than any of our direct peers. Just the continuation of this trend would already bring us to the lower end of our account growth guidance in 2022.”

Moreover, the massive influx of retail traders spiked the trading demand on the platform. It settled 91 million transactions throughout 2021, which is 21 percent higher than the previous year.