Lightyear announces the launch of Lightyear Profiles

By Joy Dumasia

FinTech startup Lightyear announces the launch of Lightyear Profiles, a way for investors to share high-level details about their portfolio with friends. It creates individual and personalised web pages for each user, showcasing their portfolio holdings, recent activities, and stocks on their watchlist.

Talking about money has often been a taboo topic. A survey last year found 75% of Brits are uncomfortable talking about money with friends and family. But things are changing, especially when it comes to investing. Retail investing boomed in both 2020 and 2021, and so did investment communities, with the number of younger investors taking part growing rapidly. With Profiles, Lightyear is arming customers with the tools they need to be part of and create investment communities.

People are now talking, sharing and getting inspiration from each other when it comes to investing, predominantly online in forums or on social media. Lightyear has built Profiles, the company’s first expansion into social investing tools, believing it can make learning about investing far more accessible and an easy way to stay connected with friends on investment journeys.

Martin Sokk, CEO and Co-Founder at Lightyear, said: “Our goal has always been to build a platform that’s cognitively easy to use, has the best customer experience and helps people become the best investors they can be. People are having conversations about investing far more frequently now, and we wanted to give them the tools to be able to structure those discussions, create their own communities and make it easier for them to share.”

Nishil Parekh, Product at Lightyear, adds: “As a product builder, I spend a huge amount of time with customers to understand how they are approaching investing and what drives them. Something has become very apparent recently: more and more people are talking about investing with their friends. It can be really intimidating to make that first investment or to even know where to start, and the dialogue between friends is proving to be a catalyst that we wanted to build into the product.”