Fintech Advisory Service Fall 2020

Fractional Trading: Coming to Canada?

Over the decades, technology has served to increase the accessibility of investing, bringing services that were once only available to institutional and high net worth investors to the masses. Fractional share trading is the latest innovation along that path. Following the wave of zero commission pricing, fractional share trading is spreading rapidly across the U.S. brokerage landscape, bringing innovative new services to retail investors and advisors alike. 

In Canada, however, the infrastructure required to support fractional share trading has yet to find a path to market. This research feature seeks to find out why, profiling the operational details of fractional share trading and discussing the business case and potential avenues of innovation it might support. This is an important read for distributors and direct to consumer firms assessing the competitive landscape and for manufacturers who may see downstream impacts from adjacent innovations like direct indexing.