The online investing market in Western Europe is set to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around seven per cent between 2005 and 2010, according to a study by Massachusetts-based research and advisory firm Financial Insights.
The study - which covers Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Nordic and the UK - predicts that there will be 23 million e-trading accounts in the region by 2010.
The UK and France will see higher growth rates than the European average and the markets will offer "interesting opportunities", says Financial Insights.
Simona Macellari, manager of research and consulting at Financial Insights EMEA, says in terms of technology, market participant requirements will move towards CRM analytics solutions.
"Market participants need to find a way to differentiate their offerings by exploiting their customer knowledge to develop more innovative products, and deliver a more personal service to encourage the use of remote channels to manage their assets," says Macellari.
Financial Insights says CRM must be reengineered to include more customer metrics and dynamic segmentation schemes and online brokers that merely compete on product breadth and hesitate to embrace new customer relationship models will lag.