There have been plans at Mintos* for years to add ETFs to the product offering. But with the MiFID II license it seems that Mintos finally has its ducks in a row.

Mintos plans to offer ETFs and bonds later this year. I spoke with Elmars Ciganovics and with Martins Sulte in Riga about the plan. ETFs and bonds are a first step to broaden the product offer beyond loans and other asset classes could be added later.

There are not yet many details disclosed around the ETF and bond offer, here is what I understood:

• initially there will be a small selection of ETFs from only one provider
• Mintos will not charge investors any fees
• the ETFs will not be bought through a stock-exchange but rather through a partner bank

I somewhat struggled to see the target audience for this product given that there are lots of established low cost brokers in many European markets. Martins sees the target audience in those Mintos customers that so far have not invested on the stock market but trust the Mintos brand and will take the first step with them with the benefit of manageing their investments in one place.

Personally I am not convinced that this strategy will succeed e.g. with German investors but maybe there are other markets. In any case it will be most interesting to watch.

So this is clearly a cross-selling strategy by Mintos where it will use the existing 500,000 investors to sell to initially. But further on passporting the license to other European countries will alow Mintos for the first time to aggressively step up marketing efforts there.

Martins pointed out the huge untapped potential he sees with saying that over 60% of American households are directly or indirectly invested on the stock markets whereas for Europeans this number is only over 30%.

And while Mintos* presents its position as market leader with confidence, Martins also pointed out that this volume is small when compared with brokers like TradeRepublic. So this seems to be the liga Mintos is aiming for next.