New Zealand investors have a new way to buy and sell their NZX-listed stocks and exchange-traded funds – Tiger Brokers.
The investment platform has been working on adding New Zealand to its growing world of products for a while and quietly turned on the feature for local investors on Wednesday.
“There’s been some client demand and also, we’ve had aspirations of being to offer the NZX too,” said Greg Boland, chief strategy officer of Tiger Brokers. “We’re the first international platform that offers the NZX market."
Tiger has pitched itself as a low-cost broker – winning MoneyHub’s recommendation as the consumer website’s favourite low-cost shares platform in 2024 – offering a range of stocks, ETFs, futures contracts, foreign exchange and bonds from the US, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mainland China.
Boland said the NZX products will only be available to New Zealand clients at first, but Tiger plans to roll it out to its global customer base at a later stage.
“There’s been some feedback from clients saying they’ll sign up when they can do everything in one place,” he said.
And an added bonus for Tiger customers is that they'll get access to live NZX data for free, he said.
Buy NZ made
Tiger’s expansion into the NZX is in contrast to local investment platform Kernel Wealth, which last week added direct access to about 500 US stocks and more than 300 ETFs to its suite of products.
Boland said expanding the pool of investors trading NZX products will only add to the New Zealand’s stock exchange’s flow of trading, which has been a perennial issue the local bourse operator has been grappling with.
“It does provide more scope for liquidity,” Boland said.
When Sharesies launched in New Zealand, it accounted for 0.2% of the value of trading on the NZX in 2019, or $127 million, while its 663,000 trades made up 6.8% of the volume of trading, according to Iress data.
Fast forward to 2024, and Sharesies grabbed 1.4% of the NZX’s trading value at $1.14 billion, and its 1.48 million trades made up 8% of the volume of trades.
Over that time the local investment platform operator has built up a customer base of more than 800,000 investors on both sides of the Tasman.
Learning to love the trade
Boland is a fan of the government’s latest efforts to improve financial education and getting children to understand basic concepts about money and investing from the start of school: “There’s a large hole in New Zealand.”
He sees trading platforms like Tiger and Sharesies as playing a role in exposing people to investing to help them get a feel for it.
“That’s the advantage of these apps and systems. By putting in $100 or $200 you can learn how to do it,” Boland said. “Until you get the feeling for it, it’s hard to do.”
Tiger NZ’s parent – Nasdaq-listed UP Fintech Holding – added 184,000 customers with deposits in calendar 2024, beating its guidance for 150,000 new accounts, taking its total number of active users to 1.09 million worldwide.
Most of Tiger’s revenue comes through its New Zealand unit, which accounted for US$147.2 million of the group’s US$391.5 million in 2024, according to statements filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Meanwhile, accounts for Tiger Brokers (NZ) filed with the Companies Office show revenue climbed 39% to $242 million in 2024, with client funds swelling to $1.96 billion as at Dec 31, up from $1.16 billion a year earlier.
Reporting by Paul McBeth. Image from Curious News.
