DEGIRO was founded in 2008 but it was not until 2013 that DEGIRO started offering the services of online brokerage to retail investors. This makes DEGIRO one of the earliest online brokerage platform. But DEGIRO has come a long way over the years, going through substantial upgrades.
For instance, the charting on DEGIRO has been significantly improved. As of 2020, DEGIRO offers pop-out charts that enhances the user experience and increases interaction. This further allows the traders to leverage the 13 different indicators, 9 drawing tools, and a multitude of chart types and views to make more meaningful decisions.
One of the most prominent reasons for DEGIRO’s popularity is the low commission fee. Specifically, in comparison with other online brokers, DEGIRO offers low trading fee for individual stocks in the UK, Europe and the United States. DEGIRO has a presence in 18 countries and a customer base of more than 450,000 customers.
DEGIRO is a platform that can quench your thirst for simplistic trading as the interface for this platform is built to accommodate the primary features and not the advanced features as compared to other online brokers. The charting platform, as well as the mobile app, can be deemed as an average solution in today’s world but nevertheless, they prove to be adequate for most traders.
Pricing structure
Mentioned below is the pricing fee structure on DEGIRO:
The stock pricing on DEGIRO is divided into three parts – for the UK market, for the US market, and for the European market. Trading individual shares in the UK costs around £1.75 + 0.014% per trade with a maximum charge of £5.00. As for the markets in the United States, €0.50 + USD 0.004 per share is the average cost. Coming to the European markets, the individual trade charges range from €2.00 + 0.118% up to €10.00 + .0168%. Apart from these charges, there is an annual fee of €2.50 charged as per the calendar year.
As for the Fund pricing, the exchange-listed investment funds can cost around €7.50 plus 0.10% as the trading fee. For the funds not listed on the exchange, this cost goes up to €75.00 plus 0.10%. In addition to this, there is an annual charge, a custodial fee of 0.2% charged for holding the funds.
Delayed market data is available to all customers by default but in order to receive real-time streaming data, the customers have to subscribe to the respective exchange which costs between €2.50 – €10.00 per month.
Interface
Both the desktop platform and the mobile app offered by DEGIRO offers a straightforward approach to the traders. This is the reason why DEGIRO is preferred by traders who just want to trade on the platform rather than going through several features.
Due to this approach, the interface of the DEGIRO platform is user-friendly. However, for traders looking for in-depth research into the market, DEGIRO is not the ideal platform as the mobile app and the desktop platform offer basic research. Moreover, for the traders who like to constantly view charts, DEGIRO will be a headache as the charting options takes them to a third-party website every time they want to view a chart. Apart from these, there is a feature to create a wishlist in the application which is labelled as “Favourites”.
Pros
- The most significant benefit of choosing DEGIRO as your online brokerage is the low fee. Assuming a trader completes 12 deals per year, each valued at £5,000, the total cost that he would have to pay to DEGIRO would be £29.40 (£2.45 x 12).
- Being an international trading platform, DEGIRO is regulated by multiple top-tier regulators.
- The interface for the DEGIRO desktop and mobile application is user-friendly which makes it one of the easiest-to-use trading platforms.
Cons
- The research available on DEGIRO is very basic. There are no trading ideas or functional data which is craved by the modern traders.
- DEGIRO does not allow the use of credit/debit cards to deposit money to the platform.
- FOREX is not available on DEGIRO.
Customer support
DEGIRO offers support to the traders over phone and email. However, the live chat service offered by the modern online brokers is missing in DEGIRO. One of the biggest advantages is that having a global presence, DEGIRO offers this customer support for different languages that are supported in the 18 countries that DEGIRO is in. The response time for the support over the phone is satisfactory and the answers to the queries are also sufficient. The same can not be said for the email support. Another drawback is that this customer support is available only between 7 AM and 9 PM, on weekdays as compared to the 24*7 support provided by its competitors.
Investment Options
DEGIRO offers a wide array of investment options to the clients with an exception of FOREX and CFT. Options available are:
- Stocks
- Exchange-traded funds (trackers)
- Bonds
- Options
- Funds
- Futures
- Cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum etc.)
In addition to this, DEGIRO offers access to 30 international exchanges spanned across Europe, North America, Asia, and Oceania. This is accommodated through Direct to Market access or Smart Order Routing (SOR) through Morgan Stanley.
Mobile App
The mobile application of DEGIRO is basic but this works to its advantage as it makes the application extremely easy to use as compared to the other complex applications offering a plethora of features. The interface allows the users to trade in just seconds which allows them to trade with more accuracy.
There is an option to create a wishlist which is synchronized with the desktop app meaning that any stock added in the wishlist of the mobile application will be present in the wishlist of the desktop application as well. There is also a feature to enable push notifications and email confirmations.
Apart from the easy and simplistic navigation as well as usage, the app offers the following features:
- Charting tools
- The ability to rapidly open, close and modify positions
- Multiple instruments
- Real-time updates
- Single click trades
Payment Methods
The option to add funds through debit/credit cards is missing on the DEGIRO platform. However, it offers various methods for the withdrawal and deposit of funds.
The options available to deposit on the platform are mentioned below:
- Bank transfer
- Trustly
- Electronic wallet
The electronic transfers from wallets can complete instantly whereas the Trustly deposits can take up to 30 minutes. Bank transfers are the slowest and can take several hours. A noteworthy point here is that DEGIRO does not charge any fee on the deposit of funds and there is no minimum deposit required at DEGIRO.
Same goes for the Withdrawals. DEGIRO does not charge any fee on the withdrawals and these withdrawals can only be made via bank transfers.
The funds are transferred only to accounts with the same name as the trader. Moreover, the transfer of funds usually happens in one business day but in case it takes more than that, DEGIRO ensures that the withdrawal of funds is completed within 3 business days. This is subject to additional information requested by DEGIRO at the time of withdrawal. If this information is incorrect, the transfer might take more than 3 days.
Demo Account
The unavailability of a demo account works as a drawback for DEGIRO. For new traders looking to sharpen their skills, this absence is felt but for the expert traders, it hardly makes a difference. However, a simulation has proved to be an attractive feature for the traders in 2020.
Deals & Promotions
If you refer DEGIRO to another person, you can get a £20 reimbursement of transaction fees. This is the “refer a friend” promotion available on DEGIRO. In order for this to work, first, you have to enter the email address of your friend in a particular section of the DEGIRO website and then, once your friend has been active for three months, you will receive a reimbursement of £20 when you reach a threshold of £20 in transaction fees.
Regulation & Licensing
Being regulated by multiple top-tier regulators is one of the biggest advantages for DEGIRO.
DEGIRO is a Dutch-based company and hence it is regulated by the Dutch Central Bank(DNB) and the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM). In addition to this, DEGIRO is also regulated by all the relevant operational markets such as the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the United Kingdom.
Being regulated by such authorities means that DEGIRO has a considerable level of financial accountability along with honest trading practices. In other words, it is a transparent and fair platform. Adding to its characteristic of being trustworthy, DEGIRO provides protection of £20,000 to the investor regardless of their nationality.
