BUX acquires neobroker Ninety Nine

The acquisition will strengthen the presence of BUX in the Spanish retail brokerage category. Its aim for the deal is to gain an existing client base as it will migrate Ninety Nine’s retail user base to its platform.

Through this acquisition, Ninety Nine users will have access to a wide range of services provided by BUX, such as investing in Spanish, European, and US stocks, ETFs, cryptocurrencies, fractional investing, and the BUX Savings Plan.

BUX enables its one million users to invest in fractional shares, ETFs, and cryptocurrencies, or put their investing on a monthly autopilot with a BUX Savings Plan. The neobroker is currently available in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Austria, and Ireland.

Further, following the acquisition, the Ninety Nine brand will no longer offer B2C brokerage services; it will only focus its resources on providing B2B and B2B2C services to banks, fintech, and media groups.

European expansion

BUX offerings in Europe include a range of services like commission-free stock tradings, fractional shares, and even trading services with contracts for differences and cryptocurrencies.

In addition to the markets mentioned above, BUX has a UK subsidiary, which migrated a significant portion of its client base to an EU-based sister company following Brexit. The revenue of the UK company halved to GBP 9.1 million in 2021, with a year-end loss of over GBP 4.2 million.

The announcement follows the launch of company’s Savings Plan offering, allowing customers to invest in up to ten fractional stocks or ETFs on a monthly basis. Earlier in 2022, the Dutch neobroker introduced fractional investing in some of Europe’s largest indices – AEX (The Netherlands), BEL20 (Belgium), CAC40 (France), and DAX40 (Germany).

Founded in 2014, BUX gives everyone the chance to invest in various tools. It includes fractional shares, ETFs, and cryptocurrencies, or to just put their investing on autopilot with a BUX Savings Plan.

The fintech sector in Spain

Spain's fintech ecosystem has developed significantly in recent years. The lack of an official register, the rapidly evolving nature of the sector and frequent overlap between clusters make it difficult to compile accurate statistics on the exact size and composition of the market.

Growth continues to be driven largely by the lending, payments, and invoicing/accounting solutions clusters. However, wealthtech is currently the fastest developing category due to global trends such as the rise in cryptocurrencies, the maturation of the personal finance management app (PFM), and virtual financial advice markets, and the emergence of new business-to-business (B2B) digital solutions that are transforming wealth management and private banking.

However, despite the strong current growth of fintech in Spain, the industry is a late starter and still at an early stage in terms of size of companies, revenues, and product pipeline. Different studies highlight that Spain sits at about the EU average in terms of integration of digital technologies.