Brokerage: Stock Trading and Investment App Development From Scratch

RNDpoint was tasked with developing a trading application for the B2C segment, which would cover the stock exchange trading and investing needs of the Bank’s existing clients. 

Only 3 months after the app’s launch, the app helped users complete 10,000+ deals with securities and 275 deals with currencies. It also onboarded 5,000+ new clients for the brokerage account and individual investment account service.

Client’s profile 

The client is a commercial Bank founded in 2000, serving clients in Western Europe. The client’s core service area is the consumer lending market, so it specializes in retail loans, credit cards, and the reception of deposits. 

The Bank is on the list of the Top-100 banks, providing service online and via 150+ local branches. It also has an established collaborative network with major retail chains. 

The Bank’s name is under NDA protection. 

Goals and requirements

The client Bank wished to develop its business and attract new clients through new possibilities. One of the transformation ideas was the creation of the investment platform Brokerage.

Our customer’s business goals:

1. Brokerage was supposed to serve as an additional sales channel for banking services.
2. The application was to help increase the number of bank customers.

The Bank turned to RNDpoint to create a new brokerage platform. The Bank was adapting new technological stacks (like Kubernetes cluster, microservice architecture, CI/CD processes instead of monolith applications, ESB) so our engineers have the possibility to build a new platform from scratch and develop all the functionality of the application:

• opening new brokerage accounts for users (onboarding);
• completing deals with stocks on the stock exchange (trading operations);
• provide informational services and analytics;
• perform currency exchange deals;
• depositing and withdrawing money to and from the client’s brokerage account.

The RNDpoint team was also involved in many related development tasks during the project’s progression. The main areas of our responsibility covered: 

• Architecture design and development 
• Business analysis 
• Functional testing
• Devops tasks

The overall task involved developing an investing platform with simple trading tools. Since the app’s target audience was beginner investors, the main priority in the development was a user-friendly and intuitive interface, which would allow users to complete deals on the stock exchange in a couple of clicks.

Implementation 

The work on this project lasted from July 2019 to August 2020. 

The RNDpoint team involved 10 experts: 

• System Architect
• 3 Business Analysts
• 2 Full-stack Developers
• Android Developer
• iOS Developer
• QA Specialist
• AQA Expert

The technology stack: 

• Java – backend development
• Kotlin (Android) and Swift (iOS) – mobile frontend development 
• JavaScript and React – the admin panel development
• MySQL – the database

Solution delivered 

The functionality RNDpoint’s experts created included: 

• Brokerage account/IIM opening. The Brokerage app allows the opening of several types of brokerage accounts for various needs. 
• Money deposits and withdrawals. Users can deposit money to their brokerage accounts from any bank’s card and withdraw money the same way. 
• Portfolio overview and analytics. The users can review their stock portfolios and revaluate their assets in different currencies, performing price delta tracking. They have access to in-depth portfolio analytics, such as viewing the total portfolio value and categorizing assets by type (shares, bonds, funds, and currencies). Every user can see how much they paid in taxes and how much income they received in dividends on shares and coupons on bonds within the set period. 
• Real-time asset analytics. Users can track the assets’ price dynamics with line, bar, or candlestick price charts, examine the information on security redemption possibilities, study news related to a specific asset, and see the scheduled payments to this asset’s holders. 
• Transaction history overview. The users can see all their transactions within the chosen period by reviewing the list of orders for stock purchases and sales they placed. 
• Investment calendar. The built-in calendar informs investors about the dates of dividend payments and bond coupon issuance to help them plan asset purchases. 
• Notifications. The users receive in-app and push notifications about their order status changes, stock exchange news, selections, deposits, and receipts from an account. Statements about cash flows in the user accounts are delivered by email. 
• Support of all order types. The users can set stop-loss orders, limit buy/sell orders, and market orders for all their trading transactions. 
• Advanced asset filters. The Brokerage app contains smart filters that allow quick sorting of securities by a variety of parameters, from the basic set (name, stock exchange code, settlement currency) to the most advanced (yield per period or percentage, amortization, market sector, offer terms, and price change over a specified period). 
• Margin trading information.  Users can buy assets with borrowed money and view the list of securities available for margin trading, see their available margin leverage, and review the history of fees charged for margin trading operations.

Besides these handy features, our team has provided the Bank’s users with a broad range of stock exchange offerings, some of which are given on an exclusive early-stage basis: 

• IPOs. The Bank’s clients can review the issuer’s information, submit their applications for IPO participation, and track the application’s execution status in the app. 
• Bond offers. The users can apply for bond offers and track their application status and investment calendar in the app.
• Referral campaign. Clients can gain rewards from the Bank by inviting their friends to download the app and open a brokerage account. Once the referred user deposits money into their accounts and starts buying assets, both receive bonus terms on their card. As part of the referral campaign, RNDpoint specialists have built an automated mechanism for determining whether campaign conditions are met and for paying remuneration.
• Asset packages. Investors can purchase packages of instruments prepared for them by the Bank’s qualified investment advisors. 

The RNDpoint team has implemented all the necessary integrations with third-party systems, such as: 

• Stock exchange
• The bank’s back-office financial and accounting systems
• Apps for up-to-date securities and issuers news 
• Security analytics
• Robo Advising
• Existing mobile applications

The process of registering an account and getting verified was also organized in a user-friendly, convenient way by RNDpoint engineers. The users can fill out the W8, FATCA/CRS, and other forms with their application inside Brokerage, with no paperwork involved, and sign all documents with EDS. 

The investor testing required by the Central Securities regulator is also done online. The app thus comprehensively covers all investment processes the Bank provides in one intuitive, functional interface.

Project outcomes 

The project was delivered to the client in August 2020, after one year of intense development work. Only three months later, Brokerage exhibited promising statistics for user activity: 

• 5,967 deals and 4,849 requests for deals with securities.  
• 275 currency deals (237 of them were done with micro-lots).  
• 5,050 new brokerage accounts and individual investment accounts registered by users. 

The app’s popularity increased very quickly within the first year of operation. 

In April 2021, there were 1,021 active brokerage accounts among the Bank’s clients, while in January 2022, their number reached 14,000. 

By the end of 2021, Brokerage had 67.5K+ registered brokerage accounts.