This week’s outing from Rocco Pendola takes a look at the rapidly evolving distribution model that is underpinning the growth in ETF take up in Europe.
And his example is found in Martins Sulte, CEO and Co-Founder at Mintos, a European digital investment platform founded in Latvia that pioneered fractional loan investing before expanding into bonds and ETFs.
Pendola explains that, in a bid to compete more aggressively with larger platforms, such as Trade Republic and Scalable Capital, Mintos recently added more than 1,000 UCITS-compliant ETFs from issuers like iShares, Vanguard and VanEck with zero transaction fees, zero custody charges, and minimum investment of EUR1.
But Sulte believes that, as costs and access barriers fall, the bigger obstacles to ETF adoption are psychological and behavioural. “The first is the belief that investing is ‘not for people like me’,” Sulte told ETF Express.
This brings us back to the points made by Broadridge’s Nabeel Ansari in July.
Ansari said that we are seeing a pivot towards the individual investor as people are taking more responsibility for their financial futures. The report says that distribution becomes the new competitive edge. “In an increasingly crowded marketplace, “distribution alpha” is emerging as a critical success factor, with firms evolving from investment-led organisations to distribution-led organisations in pursuit of growth.”
Distribution-led and all for just one Euro.
Voting is now open for the 2026 US ETF Awards with the shortlists for service providers and ETF issuers, drawn from Trackinsight data, available now at this link. The firms with the most votes win so get voting now to ensure your favourite firms come out on top.
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