In a statement, Vanguard said it would remove the account fee for Vanguard ETFs, Vanguard managed funds and the cash account on its Personal Investor platform, while a $9 brokerage fee would apply for trades of all listed investments including ETFs.
The group launched the platform in April last year in response to growing demand for digitally led investment services, with the low entry point of $500 also appealing to younger investors looking at trading for the first time.
“We are pleased to have welcomed thousands of new investors to the platform and look forward to continuously enhancing our service offering to meet our investors’ needs and expectations,” Vanguard head of Personal Investor Balaji Gopal said.
“We want to ensure that our platform supports our investors in their wealth building journey and sets them up for investment success.”
Mr Gopal said the unique selling point of Vanguard’s investment platform was its focus on long-term horizons, rather than encouraging new retail investors into short-term trades that may carry more risk.
“We want investors to be encouraged to think long term and take time to consider changes to a well-diversified portfolio,” he said.
“For this reason, when we built the platform we introduced it with features like a focus on portfolio value versus displaying short term percentage performance movements, and two factor authentication requirements to execute trades.
“As we enhance our offer, we want to continue to discourage any potential for speculative behaviour which we believe is inconsistent with building long term wealth.”
The global investment manager said it would soon introduce an automated regular investment feature as well as trust and company account types and an Android version of its app for platform users.
“Adjusting the fee structure is just one important change we are making to deliver the best value we can, and we look forward to introducing other features in the coming months that will help enhance the investing experience over time,” Mr Gopal said.
