What is the point of introducing brokers?

[Baptiste Wicht]

Hi

I recently came across meintrade.ch, an introducing broker to Interactive Brokers. It's basically a broker on top of Interactive Brokers. It is used quite a lot in the US, but not so much in Switzerland.

So, I digged a little into it and looked at their fees, and it's basically a much more expensive version of IBKR. Put simply, it's Swiss fees on top of IB.

If you want to look at the details, I have added it to the broker comparison tool: https://thepoorswiss.com/broker-comparison-tool/

I do not see the added value of this service:
* It's more expensive than IBKR, so we might as well use IBKR directly
* It's only giving the illusion of Swissness since everything is held by IBKR, so we might as well use IBKR
* It's even more expensive than some other Swiss brokers, so we might as well use another Swiss broker

Am I missing something or is this kind of service only detrimental to users?

 

[gaijin]

Thanks for sharing. I did not know about this site. This is very interesting and not usual for Switzerland. I can understand why IB would provide such an interface/API and pay them a commission to any company that brings them business/customers. So I'm completely sympathetic with IB on this point.

However, I highly question the motivation of meintrade.ch To me this looks like fake advertising. Claiming to be a Swiss broker - while you are actually not - feels highly suspicious to me. Of course I understand if you would like to include them in your broker comparison page. Still, I would be careful to make very clear that IB is the brocker behind meintrade.ch . So there is nothing Swiss about the broker and terms like Schweizer Onlinebroker / Aus der Schweiz für die Schweiz misuse the brand of Switzerland.