In a statement, Vanguard said it will eliminate the account fee for Vanguard ETFs, Vanguard-managed funds and the cash account on its platform for personal investors, while a $9 brokerage fee will apply to trades on all listed investments, including ETFs.

The group launched the platform in April last year in response to growing demand for digitally-led investment services, with the low entry point of $500 also appealing to younger investors looking to trade for the first time.

“We are delighted to welcome thousands of new investors to the platform and look forward to continuously improving our services to meet the needs and expectations of our investors,” said Vanguard’s Head of Personal Investors Balaji Gopal.

"We want to ensure that our platform supports our investors in their wealth building journey and sets them up for investment success."

Mr. Gopal said the unique selling point of Vanguard's investment platform is its focus on long-term horizons, rather than encouraging new retail investors into short-term trades that can carry more risk.

"We want investors to be encouraged to think long-term and take time to consider changes to a well-diversified portfolio," he said.

“For this reason, when we created the platform, we introduced it with features such as focusing on portfolio value versus displaying short-term percentage movements in performance and requiring two-factor authentication to execute trades.

"As we improve our offering, we want to continue to discourage any potential for speculative behavior that we believe is incompatible with building long-term wealth."

The global investment manager said it will soon introduce an automated feature for regular investments, as well as trust and company account types and an Android version of its app for platform users.

"Adjusting the fee structure is just one important change we're making to deliver the best value we can, and we look forward to introducing other features in the coming months that will help improve the investment experience over time." ” said Mr. Gopal.