IG launches Education Programme

Spread-betting outfit IG Group has launched a new client education programme, TradeSense, in an effort to slash the ‘surprisingly large’ number of clients on its books who open accounts and never trade.

Although the firm is seeing strong client growth and activity level numbers, chief executive Tim Howkins says that 40% of people who have spread-betting accounts with IG never actually bother to trade. He attributes this to the ‘misplaced concern’ that trading is difficult among those new to spread betting, in addition to a significant number who give up early after suffering a few losses.

Aside from helping to reactivate some of its dormant clients, Howkins believes TradeSense will help improve IG’s client recruitment rates. TradeSense is a six -week course and clients using it will be able to place bets that are far smaller than our usual, enabling newcomers to build up stakes gradually as they become more proficient and self-assured.

Over the six months to 30 November, IG saw profits rocket 45% despite a ‘significant’ increase in its IT and marketing spending. The firm currently has £27 million of surplus regulatory capital on its books and, according to Howkins, up to £20 million of that could be returned to shareholders. He says that if IG has not done anything with that cash by the time its full-year results are released in July, it will look at ways of handing the cash back to investors.

Tags: IG Index, igindex, spread betting, TradeSense

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 10th, 2007 at 3:57 am and is filed under Broker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.