The world of investing is rapidly evolving, yet many traditional platforms still burden users with complex fee structures, slow transactions, and a detached experience from their investments. These inefficiencies limit investors’ ability to react quickly to market changes, hindering transparency and financial accessibility.
Enter SAVR, a pioneering force in the Swedish investment landscape, committed to reinventing the entire investment journey. Founded with the vision to revolutionise mutual fund pricing and expand into a comprehensive one-stop shop for stocks, ETFs, interest-bearing accounts, and crypto, SAVR aims to dismantle the barriers of traditional investing. Their approach centres on offering unparalleled cost transparency, instant transaction capabilities, and a deeply engaging experience that transforms investors into active, enthusiastic shareholders.
In this interview, Daniel Aarenstrup, CEO and Co-founder of SAVR, details SAVR’s core mission, its unique differentiators, and how it navigates the fast-paced online trading environment. He also explains SAVR’s strategic partnership with Brite Payments, and how instant payment solutions are crucial for empowering investors in today’s dynamic markets.
Can you describe SAVR’s core mission?
Daniel Aarenstrup, CEO and Co-founder of SAVR: SAVR’s core mission is to reinvent stock and fund investing in Sweden. We aim to revolutionise the pricing model around mutual funds and have grown into stock trading, ETFs, interest-bearing accounts, and crypto. We aim to be the one-stop shop for investing.
How does SAVR differentiate itself from other online investment platforms?
Daniel Aarenstrup: We try to look at the whole investing experience, starting with finding your investment, like figuring out what to do, learning about companies, and making that investment decision. Then, when it comes to the transaction, we pioneer low-cost transparency and a lot of flexibility when doing transactions with us.
But the most exciting part is the last part of the journey. It’s being a shareholder of a public company, which is an enriching experience that makes it a lot more fun as an investor.
How is the online trading and investment landscape evolving?
Daniel Aarenstrup: The Swedish investment landscape has taken off, and we’re one of the pioneers, pushing incumbents and legacy platforms. Across the industry, we’re seeing a high tempo of product innovation in Sweden that we haven’t seen in a long time.
And how are you prepared for these changes as an organisation?
Daniel Aarenstrup: We have been since day one. We are a Tech-First company. For us, it’s been keeping tight iteration loops, focusing hard on product development, keeping a high pace, and testing things. We’re far more geared up for a high-paced environment than many legacy banks would be.
How is SAVR’s payments structure aligned with its goal of offering a transparent and cost-effective investment platform?
Daniel Aarenstrup: We’re a low-cost platform. It’s in our DNA. But it’s not only the low cost we focus on for the customer. Our customers value transparency, honesty, and trust, which are just as important to them as pricing. So, as well as cutting fund fees in half, we aim to simplify the model so that you always know what you’re paying for. With SAVR, our customers always know what they are charged, and that’s been a differentiator for us since day one.
And what role does selecting the right payment options play in maintaining this competitive edge?
Daniel Aarenstrup: In our space, our customers expect a zero-fee environment when depositing and withdrawing money. They’re expecting zero fees, Instant deposits, and high speed and usability in all our products so they can act fast on the markets and buy and sell whenever they want.
How does selecting the right payment options help maintain your competitive edge?
Daniel Aarenstrup: SAVR customers expect zero fees for all deposits and withdrawals. They also expect really fast and instant withdrawals and pulses to be able to act quickly on the markets for investment opportunities – our customers have high expectations on this. Therefore, moving funds in and out of the platform is absolutely critical to us.
How does Brite’s ability to handle larger transactions help attract and retain high-value customers?
Daniel Aarenstrup: Whether it’s high-value customers or indeed any customer, trust is a massive factor for us when handling people’s life savings. Whether a high-net-worth customer or an average investor, trust is the number one factor when handling their money. Absolutely.
Given the critical need for speed in online trading. How does Brite’s fast payment settlement help?
Daniel Aarenstrup: Real-time trading speed, depositing and acting as fast as the market are critical. Our customers have very high expectations on this, and it can be costly to be late to a trade or miss an opportunity. Therefore, we expect the highest possible experience from our payment partners.
How has using Brite helped improve your payment processing compared to previous solutions?
Daniel Aarenstrup: Previously, we had a big gap in our deposit offering capabilities. We could easily enable instant small deposits, but offered slow, large deposits. With Brite’s payments solution, we’re now able to offer instant deposits at any size, small or large. And that is key when serving our larger customers. It was crucial to fill a gap in our experience.
Our customers expect seamless, instant experiences with SAVR. Trading is instant and requires an instant UX experience. Having to wait days to deposit cash, and then begin to use the product really, puts a dent in the whole experience.
Have customers’ expectations changed in recent years?
Daniel Aarenstrup: Definitely. Online trading platforms have existed for a long time, but expectations for an instant trading experience are advancing, just like many other apps and products today. There isn’t the tolerance to wait simply because it’s a bank product. This is especially true for younger customers and their expectations of trading products.
How has partnering with Brite helped you position the company for further growth?
Daniel Aarenstrup: Our number one and Northstar metric is assets under management (AUM). As long as we are getting deposits into the platform, we will grow our business. Therefore, to us, having a seamless flow of deposits into the platform is the most important growth metric we have.
Why did you choose Brite as a payments partner?
Daniel Aarenstrup: Brite was chosen because it is a very cost-efficient solution and because of the user experience it could provide our customers. We also felt the Brite team was excited about the project and committed to supporting SAVR in the long term.
Why was offering A2A payments as part of your payment mix necessary?
Daniel Aarenstrup: Previously, we had a payment mix of small instant deposits and recurring bank deposits that took 1 to 2 bank days to process. That was a big gap in experience, as we could not offer instant larger deposits. Now, we see Brite’s instant payments being used for small and large transactions. Overall, I think the user experience of A2A payments is also superior to other payment options.
What is it that SAVR offer its customers that grabs them?
Daniel Aarenstrup: What we aimed to do differently with SAVR was to reinvent the experience of investing in a public company. Traditionally, this experience involved looking at a large table of assets and making buy or sell decisions. However, we wanted to focus on the experience before investing. This means finding investments, truly understanding the company’s activities, and getting excited about those opportunities. After completing the transaction, we also want investors to feel like shareholders, actively engaging with and becoming enthusiastic about their portfolio and investments.
How does Brite fit into that mission?
Daniel Aarenstrup: Brite is the second of those three steps: doing the transaction. So when you know what you want to buy, you can do that instantly, have complete control of your cash and assets, and get in and out of investments as fast as possible.
Why is it essential for your customers to be able to pay in and get payouts quickly?
Daniel Aarenstrup: The financial markets never sleep. We are serving 18 different international markets. So, starting with markets opening in Asia, Europe, and the U.S, we must provide a real-time service to our customers almost 24/7.
What positive impacts does Brite have on your business operations?
Daniel Aarenstrup: We have increased the average deposit size and obviously saved on fees we would otherwise have had to pay.
Increasing the average deposit size for our customers was essential. Previously, many customers expressed frustration with making several deposits spread out over multiple banking days, which often resulted in delays. By addressing this pain point, we have improved our key metrics and enhanced customer satisfaction.
We’ve always taken pride in being on the bleeding edge of everything we do. We at SAVR try to be the first movers in everything in our space. Working with a company that we feel shares that mission makes us feel comfortable about the future and the partnership with Brite.
How would you summarise what it’s been like working with Brite?
Daniel Aarenstrup: The best way to summarise the working relationship with Brite is that we share a common mission: to be cutting-edge providers in fintech, Brite in payments, and SAVR in investing. Being on the same path and sharing those same values and vision is an excellent foundation for a partnership.
Can you give me some examples of how SAVR is on the bleeding edge of fintech and trading platforms?
Daniel Aarenstrup: The most exciting thing cooking in the lab right now at SAVR is connected to AI. We’re building AI into the very fabric of the product.
When it comes to finance and investing, the problem for the user is not the lack of data. It’s the surplus of data. We are set to use AI to help users digest the constant flow of information and new data and assist them with making investment decisions. This is the most exciting new technology in trading and investing right now.
SAVR is shipping features that analyse your portfolio in real time. If your most significant investment suddenly goes up or down 10%, you need to figure out what happened. And you’ll need to read the news, and you’ll have to look at the macro. Was there some global event, or what was happening inside a company? Our AI puts all those pieces together, giving you the immediate answer. Your holding went up 10% because this happened. And just adding on those small things creates a much richer and easier experience for the user.
Learn more about SAVR and how it uses Brite Payments
If you would like to find out more about the benefits Brite Payments provides SAVR’s customer base, please click the banner below to check our customer story. Or if you would like to talk to Brite directly about one of our products featured in the above interview, get in touch with our payment experts directly.
