Sharesies savings on the way

Online investment platform Sharesies is expanding beyond investment with the launch of a savings product available on the Sharesies app.

Wednesday, April 19th 2023, 1:31PM

Sharesies Save, an on-call saving account with an initial interest rate of 4.35% and no fees, limits, or restrictions, will roll out from May. Investors will be able to deposit money in their Sharesies wallet, and have the option to either invest it or transfer it to the Save account.

The funds are held in an account with a major NZ registered bank with interest calculated daily based on the account balance and paid monthly. Sharesies general manager of investing and saving, Scott Nixon says, the name of the bank is commercially sensitive but it has a AA– credit rating.

Nixon says Sharesies Save has been built based on feedback and the needs of investors. To date, 2,000 people have signed up to be part of the early access group. From today anyone can register to join the waitlist.

“We did a lot of customer research and there were two main themes. We wanted to know if they saw a difference between investing and saving and the overwhelming feedback was that they could clearly articulate a difference. The second type of feedback was that a lot, not all, of the accounts in the New Zealand market have restrictions such as minimum deposits or fees to withdraw which people said got in the way of saving.”

Nixon joined Sharesies in May 2022 to look at expanding its product offering.

“When I first came on there was no fixed view about what sharesies might do next so it was strategy work for the first two to three months. It became pretty obvious that a savings type offer would be good; we thought it would sit nicely alongside the investing proposition, it’s relatively simple, customers understand and we’ve been able to bring it out quite quickly. Also with interest rates, it felt like the time was right for the product.”

Tags: Sharesies