Small investors have to be very strong now.
Buy shares and ETFs for 1 euro per transaction, savings plans without a fee – millions of private investors in Germany have long since gotten used to it. But that will be over again in 2026!
Reason: The European Union prohibits the revenue model of practical neo-brokers such as “Scalable Capital” and “Trade Republic”. This also applies to online brokers. For Germany, a deadline of June 30, 2026 was granted for this.
Investors would then be forced to trade at other brokers’ prices. An order could then cost several euros! Savings plans too.
Examples:
▶︎ DKB-Bank: order commission 10 euros per trade (up to 10,000 euros in volume); makes up to 120 euros a year with a savings plan of 100 euros a month!
▶︎ Similar to S Broker (Sparkasse): Every order there costs 4.99 euros plus 0.25 percent of the order value!
▶︎ Order commission flatex: 5.90 euros
▶︎ Order commission ING: 4.90 euros + 0.25 percent of the order volume
The EU Parliament still has to approve the EU Commission’s proposal. However, this is only a formality.
Neobroker business model on the brink
That’s what it’s all about: neo-brokers like “Trade Republic” and “Scalable Capital” earn their money thanks to a business model that avoids many fees (to the bank, to the broker and the stock exchange) when buying shares.
It’s called Payment for Order Flow (PfOF). What is meant by this is that the brokers (e.g. “Trade Republic”) are paid to forward their customers’ orders to certain exchanges (through middlemen, so-called “market makers”). This is the only way brokers can reduce trading fees per trade.
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“Wild West” on the financial market is to be ended
The EU wants to ban this practice.
Reason: The investor does not know whether he will get the best price when buying because the Neobroker does not have other stock exchanges on offer due to the PfOF contracts. This eliminates the competition between the trading places that conventional direct banks offer. They guarantee “best execution” for every trade, but the high order fees also apply.
► Asset manager Andreas Beck therefore considers the EU Commission’s approach of regulating the “wild west” of the financial market to be expedient and in the interests of the consumer.
► Others, however, only see this as a theoretical loss for customers – such as the “Stiftung Warentest”!
“Stiftung Warentest” editor Roland Aulitzky to BILD: “There is no evidence that investors pay higher prices to neo-brokers than at other trading venues due to exclusive contracts”.
For him it is clear: If PfOF should actually be banned and thus cheap trade and free savings plans be history, “that would be a great disadvantage for consumers”.
“Like a cigarette tax on stocks”
“This ban is a law preventing competition,” says Erik Podzuweit, co-founder and co-CEO of the neo-broker “Scalable Capital” (according to their own statements 600,000 customers), which would be directly affected by the new EU rules.
He suspects that the big stock exchanges (“Deutsche Börse”, Xetra) have done successful lobbying in Brussels because they see their quasi-monopoly position being endangered by the neo-brokers.
“Apparently, they want to make stock trading more expensive,” he complained in an interview with BILD. “It’s like a cigarette tax on stocks.” It is not only his company that suffers, but above all the private investors.
“This is destroying the stock culture again”
This is also how the prominent investor and investment expert Christian W. Röhl sees it, telling BILD: “This ban is an attack on the democratization of financial investments”.
Röhl warns that the neo-broker culture in Germany, which helps young people in particular to invest capital, could be slowed down by EU regulation. “With the ban, we are destroying the stock culture that is just emerging in Germany.”