UK-based investment platform Winvesta Ltd has partnered with US broker-dealer DriveWealth, LLC, to bring fractional investment in the US markets to its origins in India. Under this collaboration deal, DriveWealth will serve as an executing broker for US stock trades and also offers Winvesta's clients an affordable gateway to invest in fractional shares.
Winvesta is now offering US stock market access via a mobile app to investors across India. It has launched its app thus far via Android, which notably has a 95% market share in India, where nearly 75% of online activity takes place on mobile phones.
Winvesta, whose operations span India and the US, also plans to roll out its technology, supported by the DriveWealth partnership, in the UK later this year.
"It's astonishing that less than 0.1% of Indian wealth is invested beyond its borders. The impact COVID-19 has had on Indian portfolios and the quick resurgence of the US markets has demonstrated the trouble of maintaining a home bias. Partnering with DriveWealth is an important first step in making global investment access easier for resident Indians," said Swastik Nigam, Founder and CEO of Winvesta.
This collaboration also enables the region's investors to build portfolios of US stocks, ETFs, and ADRs with low costs starting from $0.99 per trade. The fractional trading feature also eliminates the barriers that many investors face when trying to invest in a diversified portfolio of high-value securities.
These include instruments traded at NASDAQ and the New York Stock Exchange , offering over 4,000 assets and indexes from companies such as Apple, Alibaba, Google, the S&P 500 index, and many more.
DriveWealth already partners with many financial institutions, brokers, app developers, and technology companies to provide users with the ability to open a US-based brokerage account and invest in the US equities market. The company's offering covers six continents, offering its APIs that partners can use to provide new investment capabilities to their clients.
DriveWealth CEO Robert Cortright added: "We are delighted to provide our technology and infrastructure to Winvesta to enable the firm to bring investors throughout India straightforward access to US stocks in an affordable manner, without the need for minimum balances, high transaction costs or full share quantities. Investors across the world have become more aware than ever of the importance of balancing their portfolios among different assets."
