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Earlier this year, I switched internet providers. For whatever reason, my old provider (Vodafone) owed me £20. How did they pay this back? They sent me a cheque in the post.
I have never read Richard Thaler’s book Nudge, nor do I pretend to be an expert in behavioural economics. But I can tell you very simply what innate part of the human lizard brain this was an attempt to tap into – they know I CBA to walk to the bank and cash the cheque.
The result? If you imagine doing this at scale, then a good number of people CBA to go to the bank, meaning they don’t have to pay out to their customers. Much like AJ Tracey in his hit ‘Quarterback’, Vodafone wants to secure the ‘bag’ and keep all of that.
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I thought of this recently for a couple of reasons. One was because of an executive at one firm describing building models for worst case P&L from trading activity.
When they initially built the model, they forgot a simple point – even though the firm may have had a paper loss, a lot of the time they didn’t crystalise that loss because clients didn’t withdraw, but instead kept on trading.
Another is the ‘scaling’ model that prop firms offer. This is where a client passes a challenge and gets a payout. However, the prop then offers them the opportunity to ‘scale’ to a bigger account. In practice, this is kind of like ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’ – do you keep the cash and go home or go to the next question and the potential for more money but with the risk of losing everything?
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Like basically any business, brokers are thus in an ‘uncomfortable’ position, where a client withdrawing funds is bad for them. If they keep the money in, they are more likely to keep trading and making you money. The opposite is also true.
Before any stockbrokers start feeling high and mighty, this applies – maybe even more so – to them as well. When client assets and cash holdings flow out, the ability to charge AUM-based account fees also goes out of the window.
Anyone that has ever tried to transfer an investment account from one stockbroker to another (it took me almost 3 months) will witness a remarkable transformation. When money is coming in, replies and processes are quick and speedy. When money goes out, executives at the same company start to resemble a post office employee on a heavy dose of melatonin.
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This leads to an interesting question of how much you should build technology to stymy the flow of funds out of your company.
As one example, Trading 212’s app is very good at getting you to deposit, with instant access to funds. Withdrawal is not exactly difficult but the process is much more cumbersome than depositing.
The company also just launched a debit card and has high interest on idle cash. In other words, they are designing features that incentivise you to not take your cash out or even, in theory, negate the need for you to do so. This is alongside the UX design that makes it harder to do so, even if you wanted to.
However, you can look at this in a different way as well. When clients can’t withdraw funds, they get very angry, very quickly.
If you are blocking or lagging on giving someone their money back, there is a close to 100% probability you are going to have problems with your online reputation, and potentially get heat from the regulator. Google basically any broker’s name followed by ‘withdrawal problems Reddit’ and you will see what I mean.
Plus you also have to think of the benefits of fast withdrawals for branding. For example, legend has it that Exness’s branding was given a huge boost from once paying out to a client in the tens of millions, close to instantly. The company also continues to give ~80% of withdrawals instantly.
Similarly, if you look at prop marketing, many firms have used the ‘payout’ certificates to sell themselves. One firm in the space recently told me that when they made a huge payout, the person was so happy that they got the cash on the same day that they went and started spamming social media with positive feedback. As a result, the prop made more money in new challenge sign ups from this than they had actually paid out to the person.
On the other hand, instant withdrawals can be used by the client to facilitate fraud more easily. Let’s say you do some kind of latency arbitrage, profit from it, then have the ability to withdraw instantly. This makes your job much easier!
The situation is thus something like this – if you make it harder to take money out, you might get more business but you have the more intangible brand / reputation risk. If you make it easy to take cash out, you know it can lead to a loss of business but you have the more ethereal benefits of positive branding and reputation.
So what is the solution? Perhaps the best option is to make incentives to keep your cash in, but if the client wants the money – give it to them fast. Like most things in life, there is no perfect solution.
And if you were wondering, I still haven’t cashed that cheque from Vodafone. It’s been five months now.
