(Bloomberg) —
Scalable Capital, a German financial technology firm founded by former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. bankers and backed by BlackRock Inc., will roll out its broker app to some of Europe’s biggest non-German-speaking countries.
The company will start its broker in Spain, Italy and France by January, and will add Austria and the Netherlands later next year, Co-Chief Executive Officer Erik Podzuweit said in an interview, adding that these markets offer the largest amount of potential customers while also only seeing limited competition for broker services.
“We are going to finance the growth with the money we have secured over the summer,” Podzuweit said. In June, the firm raised 150 million euros ($174 million) at a 1.2 billion euro valuation. The broker currently has 200,000 customers who have invested 2.5 billion euros, according to the executive.
Scalable’s digital broker, which was started in the summer of 2020, lets customers chose between a free account with individually charged trades and a flat rate account with unlimited trades. It competes for low-fee broker services with Berlin-based Trade Republic Bank GmbH, which was valued at more that $5 billion in May.
Podzuweit said the broker saw strong client growth during the pandemic as lots of people were stuck at home and markets were volatile. “The number of customers is still increasing rapidly and in my opinion it will stay that way, even though it will no longer be at the same level as, for example, in January of this year,” he added.
Scalable was founded in 2014 by former Goldman Sachs employees including Podzuweit, Florian Prucker, and Adam French. Podzuweit worked in sales, Prucker and French were traders, according to a Scalable spokesperson. A fourth co-founder is Stefan Mittnik, an economist in Munich.
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