This is as the company has received a UK FCA license and gears up to compete in the increasingly crowded online trading and investment products market in the United Kingdom.
Lightyear has named its COO, Wander Rutgers as CEO of the licensed UK company. He replaces co-founder Martin Sokk, who remains as CEO of the parent Lightyear company. Sokk is a former senior executive at Wise, a money transfer company. In 2020, he founded Lightyear with Mihkel Aamer, a former Wise colleague and serves as Lightyear’s CTO. Since 2022, Wander Rutgers has been COO of Lightyear. Before joining Robinhood UK as President from 2018 to 2020 during the early first attempt of Robinhood to expand in the United Kingdom, he was also with Sokk and Aamer at Wise.
Lightyear also operates in the Europe through Estonia based Lightyear Europe AS. It is licensed by the Estonian Financial Supervision Authority or Finantspinspektsioon. Until now it had been active in the United Kingdom as an appointed representative of FCA regulated RiskSave Technologies Ltd. The new license issued to Lightyear UK Ltd will let the company to directly offer Cash and Stocks and Shares ISAs or Individual Savings Accounts. It is a market it plans to expand to in early next year.
The move comes as larger neobank/neobroker competitors are also increasing their presence in the United Kingdom online trading market. This includes Revolut and Robinhood, which is US based. Incumbent broker Hargreaves Lansdown is in process of being obtained.
