Banco Inter‘s investment platform, Inter Invest, has reached the mark of 2 million investors and BRL 58.1 billion in assets under custody. Compared to the first quarter of last year, the user base grew 34%. In the bank’s view, the challenging macroeconomic scenario, combined with the seasonal issue, kept the client acquisition stable in the first quarter, but the expectation is that the investment unit will grow again throughout the year.
Felipe Bottino, Inter Invest’s director, explained that the platform does not do outbound marketing and, therefore, focuses on converting Inter’s existing clients. The share of “investor clients”, as he calls them, is 12% of all Inter’s user base, which jumped from 16.3 million to 18.6 million in the first quarter.
According to Bottino, there is a link between the growth of Inter and Inter Invest, but it is natural for the investment operation to feel the effects of a more challenging macroeconomic moment, with high inflation and interest rates and weak economic activity.
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“Naturally, this client will be converted (from Inter to Inter Invest). We saw a big acceleration in the growth of Inter users and now our mission is to bring them to Inter Invest as well. It has a lag, indeed, but we are very confident that with our full value proposition that conversion will be better and better.” In addition, he says, the first quarters of the year are usually more complex.
He says that Inter Invest is now committed to working on “the user experience”, as it considers the expansion of its product offering during the last year to be consolidated.
According to data from the end of 2021, Inter Invest was responsible for 7.9% of Inter’s service revenue in 2021. In addition to operating as a bank and offering investment services, Inter operates in insurance and other financial products as well.
Inter’s unit has dropped 54.3% in the year. The stock devaluation was more intense after Inter released its first-quarter operational preview. The group’s consolidated results are due to be released on May 16.
“As we are an owner company, ultra-capitalized, this allows us to have this volatility,” he said. “A lot of people have to respond to the market every quarter and sometimes they end up not doing the right thing,” he added.
Inter’s controlling group are members of the Menin family, especially founder Rubens Menin, a businessman who also founded the construction company MRV, from which Inter initially emerged to operate as a credit society.
