Key Statistics

1. Market Growth and Forecasts

• The online investment market is forecast to grow at 102% per year to 2.4 million online trading accounts by 2004
• The total number of online trades has the potential to grow ten-fold in the four years as the market shifts from traditional, offline execution-only share dealing, to Internet-based services
• Online share dealing has attracted a new breed of investors: 17% of online investors have owned shares for less than a year
• 37.0% of investors who are not currently investing online state that they will open an online account within the next 12 months while only a small percentage claim that they will never invest online
• Almost 90% of online investors expect to increase their equity investments in the next 12 months
• Current UK online investors display a high level of interest in buying other financial products online, the majority claim: that they would like to invest in ISAs and mutual over the Internet
• The success to date of Internet banking is a precursor to future patterns in online investing in the UK

2. Competitors

• There are currently more than 30 players offering online investment services to the UK market
• The number of online brokers is forecast to exceed 40 within the next 18 months due to the potential arrival of new entrants including large investment banks, foreign online brokers and UK offline stockbrokers
• Competition will be increasingly based on price and broader service offerings
• Super financial portals and bricks and clicks strategies will become increasingly important as competitors vie for offering UK consumers complete solutions for their investment requirements 

3. UK Online Investors

• The UK online investment market is largely male dominated and appeals to a younger audience than traditional brokers. The majority of online investors are aged between 18 and 45
• Online investors tend to be senior executives or self-employed professionals with more than half earning more than £30,000 per annum
• Online investors appear to be highly successful at managing their finances, more than 80% of online investors have outperformed the FT-SE 100 in the past 12 months
• Online investors spend a significant amount of time researching their investments of which two thirds is conducted on the Internet
• Online investors' preferred information sources for making their investment decisions are the financial web sites, specialist magazines, the financial daily press
• Approximately 45% of online investors as claim to have more than one online account in order to spread risks and guarantee access to trading services