If people have good ideas for improving SWF, you could list them here. Then E Datt or management could consider them - it might be an idea that has not come to their minds yet.
It could be classified as:
Retention - minimizing users leaving.
Growth - gaining new users (efficiently).
Revenue - improving revenue per user.
Customer Satisfaction - somewhat related to retention.
Other.
And optionally could be further classified as: regular users vs high-value users (eg. people with a large portfolio, or high trade frequency). Stake's low pricing targets small-portfolio users for example.
Side note: Stake just updated their pricing for ASX from AU$3 to AU$3+, and US from $0 to US$3+.
Examples:
IPOs/Raisings
(Primary: Revenue Secondary: High-value users)Management seem to be implementing something related to IPOs now. I imagine it would be low cost to run, and could deliver a revenue boost (through commissions earned). Potentially similar in scale to subscription revenue? I imagine middle-aged users would be more interested in IPOs than younger users, so if they see this as a benefit, it might draw a few more higher-portfolio middle-aged users. So it would boost revenue per user and increase positive cashflow (high margin revenue, like interest).
Rewards Program / Tailored Goals
(Primary: Retention Secondary: Revenue-Trades Frequency Cost: Revenue-Discount)$10 credit towards ETF purchases for every 10 rewards points earned. Earn 1 point per trade, and a bonus point(s) for certain valuable tasks eg. placing an order after being dormant for >30 days, or researching dividend history of several companies. Means lost brokerage revenue of $1+ per trade, but helps close the gap between $9.50 and $3+ (Stake), without actually cutting the price drastically. Being equivalent to a small discount, it should improve retention - less users lost to Stake etc. The tailored goals are intended to encourage increased trade frequency, or even higher cash balance, if the goals were tailored that way.
By comparison, cutting the price to $8.50 would still appear uncompetitive to $3, but receiving 'freebies/bonuses' could feel psychologically positive, with the order page showing 'Total: $5000 (after $10 rewards credit applied)'. A bit similar to Commsec offering premium software access after trading 20+ times etc.
With the brokerage:interest ratio changing from 70:30 to 30:70 recently, it's now cheaper than ever to offer 'discounts/subsidies/bonuses' to the brokerage price. Since you'd be sacrificing a portion of the newly lower 30% proportion.
Any other ideas for competing with Stake, without price-matching and losing $6.50 revenue per trade? (price matching would be extremely expensive, which would move us to significant cash burn) Remember that Stake would have disproportionately small-portfolio accounts. Management would be aware of the average portfolio size / cash balance of users who transfer out to Stake, so they should know whether it's a big problem affecting our client cash/trades.
An assumption of mine: more users would leave due to brokerage cost, than lack of interest payments on client cash. I think people worried about interest have the option to withdraw the cash, so don't need to transfer to another broker. So I'm not sure whether interest needs adjusting. It is delivering well as the moment.
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