In a watershed moment for the UK investment market, the WiseAlpha platform now gives all retail investors the ability to access to the entire pool of Sterling corporate and government bonds.
This game-changing move enables all retail investors to enter a market that was previously closed off due to high barriers to entry.
Rezaah Ahmad, CEO of WiseAlpha, said today, “Our purpose is the democratisation of the corporate bond market. The FCA and UK government recently expressed a desire to widen retail participation in this market. At WiseAlpha, we were ahead of the curve, making it easy and affordable for individual retail investors.”
WiseAlpha invented Fractional Bonds back in 2016. Corporate Bonds can give predictable income and equity-like returns without the same level of volatility. Before WiseAlpha, it was almost impossible for individual investors, even HNW investors to access the bond market in any meaningful way despite the government and corporate debt securities market being valued at nearly €128 trn by the ICMA. Every investment required a huge amount of complex paperwork and a minimum investment of £100,000 per bond turning into a predominantly institutional market.
WiseAlpha’s proprietary tech platform makes the whole process easy, and its Fractional Bond product reduces the minimum investment to just £100 so that individual investors can easily buy the bonds of FTSE companies such as Ocado and Marks & Spencer or international firms like Apple.
This is a watershed moment in the UK investment market as retail investors now have direct access to an entire asset class that they didn’t have access to before and can place the entire pool of Sterling corporate bonds and government bonds into their ISAs.
WiseAlpha also has a B2B2C Solutions service for institutional clients, making it easy for Wealth Managers, banks or brokers to partner with WiseAlpha and make Fractional Bonds available to their clients. This can be done using the WiseAlpha interface, or they can provide a white-label solution so that partners can present the portal with their own branding.
WiseAlpha believes there will be huge growth in this area over the coming years. Over £100 million of volume has already been traded by individual investors on the WiseAlpha platform which will rise exponentially as it expands through institutional partnerships.
WiseAlpha’s CEO, Rezaah Ahmad says, “It seems remarkable that in 2024, individuals cannot access the bond market in the same way they can invest in equities. If you want to buy Ocado shares, you can do that with ease, yet if you want to buy their bonds (which are lower risk than their shares), you need £100,000. Now that WiseAlpha is open to everyone this disparity has been removed”.