EQS-News: Update on the move of our existing Smartbroker customers: High demand for SMARTBROKER+

Update on the move of our existing Smartbroker customers: High demand for SMARTBROKER+

• Current customer approval rate to move to SMARTBROKER+ in excess of 50%
• Targetted approval rate by account moving date later in October of 70%
• Stiftung Warentest, Germanys leading independent product review council, recommend that existing customers move to SMARTBROKER+
• SMARTBROKER+ savings plans and foreign trading venues to be activated during October

Berlin, 5 October 2023

The SMARTBROKER+ team is celebrating another milestone: By the end of September, a significant proportion of Smartbroker's existing customers have already moved their securities account to the new platform. If the deadline for relocation registrations were today, the Berlin-based financial services provider would be able to move more than 50 percent of the transferable Smartbroker customer assets to SMARTBROKER+ securities accounts.

At the end of August, Smartbroker Holding AG (ISIN: DE000A2GS609, FSE: SB1) and Smartbroker AG launched the new SMARTBROKER+ platform. To date, the securities accounts of Smartbroker's existing customers have been provided by DAB BNP Paribas; this cooperation will be discontinued at the end of the year, and replaced with a new partnership with by Baader Bank AG. Existing customers who plan to retain their account must therefore re-apply for a new securities account in the newly developed SMARTBROKER+ app by mid-October. Due to the significant amount of customers and accounts to be transferred, and the associated IT process, the move of all relevant customer securities will take place in one fell swoop.

Stiftung Warentest, Germanys leading independent product review council, praises usability and the new SMARTBROKER+ app

All assets will be transferred to the new securities accounts at Baader Bank on the last weekend in October. The Management Board of the Smartbroker Group currently assumes that a significant number of additional customers will consent to the upcoming move during the next days. In addition to the SMARTBROKER+ securities account openings that have already been completed, a material number of backlog registrations have not yet been processed and are therefore not included in the current customer approval rate. By the moving date at the end of October, the approval rate is expected to reach around 70 percent of customer activities.

Thomas Soltau, CEO of Smartbroker AG, commented on the interim status of the account move: "We are very pleased with the profusely positive response to SMARTBROKER+, and would like to thank all customers for their trust. Just a few days ago, the independent product review council Stiftung Warentest tested our new offering and recommended all existing Smartbroker customers to move to SMARTBROKER+[1], explicitly praising our new platforms usability and our new app precisely aspects that have often been criticized in the past. In the next few days, we will continue to expand the product range and will work hard to convince the remaining Smartbroker customers to move to our new platform. In this context, I am also pleased to announce that in October we will activate savings plans on SMARTBROKER+ and the foreign trading venues shortly thereafter."

About Smartbroker Group:

The Smartbroker Group operates SMARTBROKER+ a next-generation broker that is the only provider in Germany to combine the extensive product range of classic brokers with the extremely favourable conditions of neobrokers. The Company's Transaction unit also includes the digital fund broker FondsDISCOUNT.de. At the same time, the Group operates four high-reach stock exchange portals through Its Media unit that provide private investors with capital market information (wallstreet-online.de, boersenNews.de, FinanzNachrichten.de and ARIVA.de). With several hundred million monthly page views, the Group is by far the largest publisher-independent financial portal operator in the German-speaking world and maintains the largest financial community.
 

^[1] Stiftung Warentest (September 29, 2023): https://www.test.de/Wertpapierdepots-Kunden-des-Smartbroker-muessen-umziehen-6048760-0/