FinTech News
FinTech Firm SoFi Introduces Two ETFs
As we’ve seen time and time again in the FinTech space, a major trend has found companies moving beyond their core product and introducing related but different services. For example this trend has brought a slew of branded debit cards to the market as startups position themselves as lower-cost alternatives to big banks. Now one FinTech is once again branching out, bringing exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to market.
This week SoFi introduced two ETFs: SoFi Select 500 ETF and SoFi Next 500 ETF, which will be traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbols SFY and SFYX respectively. While Select 500 ETF includes the 500 largest U.S. stocks, the Next 500 ETF features stocks from the “next” 500 largest U.S. companies — in other words, the 501st through 1000th largest companies). According to SoFi, they partnered with Tidal ETF Services for “the trust, strategy, administrative and operational aspects of the ETFs.” As of this writing, $SFY was priced at $10.07 a share with $SFYX at $10.10.
In a press release announcing the company’s ETF duo, SoFi Ceo Anthony Noto said, “When it comes to achieving financial independence, investing isn’t a choice — it’s a requirement. We designed these ETFs to make it as simple and easy as possible for anyone to start investing for the future, without any fees dragging on your returns.” To that point, each of these funds currently has fee waivers that will bring total fund expenses to zero. The company says that will continue to be the case through at last June 30th, 2020.
The introduction of the Select 500 and Next 500 ETFs is just the latest expansion announcement from FinTech lender SoFi in recent months. Previously the company unveiled its SoFi Invest platform that offers users fee-free Active or Automated trading. Additionally their SoFi Money accounts allow customers to earn 2.25% APY on their savings and access funds via a stylish debit card. Both of these features can be accessed through SoFi’s app — which, for the record, still offers personal loans, home loans, student loan refinancing, and more.
Even with this aggressive rollout of products, it seems SoFi isn’t done yet. The company says it now plans to add support for cryptocurrency trading to its SoFi Invest platform “in the coming months.” Interestingly, while such an announcement would be the biggest story of the quarter for some companies, it really pales in comparison to what else SoFi has rolled out this year alone. Needless to say the startup is certainly positioning themselves as a FinTech one stop shop and, as they put it, “giv[ing] our more than half a million members fast access to tools to get their money right.”
