Payments and Reconciliations Intern

ISA millionaire numbers surge 52% to record high as top pots Hit £12m. The number of ISA millionaires in the United Kingdom surged by 52% in a single year, reaching a record high of 7,730 according to new HM Revenue and Customs data. For fintech professionals, this dramatic rise highlights the increasing efficacy of digital investment wrappers and the massive scale of tax-efficient wealth now being managed through retail platforms. What was announced. A Freedom of Information (FOI) request by the smart money app Plum has revealed that the number of individuals holding more than £1 million in their ISA accounts climbed from 5,070 to 7,730 during the 2023-24 tax year. This increase of 2,660 individuals marks the largest year-on-year growth since HMRC began disclosing these figures in 2016. At that time, there were only 450 ISA millionaires, representing a 1,618% increase over the last eight years. The data provides a detailed breakdown of the wealth tiers within this group. Of the 7,730 millionaires, the vast majority - 7,300 investors - hold pots valued between £1 million and £1,999,999. A further 320 individuals possess pots between £2 million and £2,999,999, while 40 hold between £3 million and £3,999,999. An elite group of 60 investors hold pots exceeding £4 million, with an average value of £7,708,000 each. The top 25 ISA investors in the country are sitting on average pots of £11,928,000, having seen a tax-free gain of £623,000 (5.5%) in just twelve months. Collectively, UK ISA millionaires now hold more than £10 billion in tax-free wealth. HMRC previously confirmed that all ISA millionaire pots were accumulated through stocks and shares investing rather than cash savings. This trend comes as the market prepares for significant policy shifts, including the introduction of inheritance tax on pensions in April 2027 and a reduction in the annual cash ISA allowance from £20,000 to £12,000 for savers under 65. "A jump of more than 50% in a single year is really telling. These aren't people who suddenly saved their way to £1m. It's the result of years of patient investing, where the growth on your growth starts doing the heavy lifting. That's the bit people underestimate." Will Bryant, Director of Wealth Strategy at smart money app Plum. The companies involved. Plum is a smart money app designed to automate savings and wealth management for retail users. The company operates in the UK and European markets, providing a platform that allows users to invest in funds, diversify across thousands of companies, and select risk profiles tailored to their personal outlook. Plum focuses on lowering the barriers to entry for investing, offering low-cost access to global markets and tools like pound-cost averaging to help users manage volatility. In the broader fintech ecosystem, Plum has positioned itself as a data-driven advocate for retail savers, frequently using FOI requests to highlight trends in UK tax policy and saving habits. To support its technical growth and scale its investment offerings, Plum recently selected Upvest to power its UK investment infrastructure. This partnership is central to Plum's ability to provide the sophisticated stocks and shares ISA products that the HMRC data suggests are essential for long-term wealth accumulation. By integrating with infrastructure providers like Upvest, Plum aims to streamline the delivery of tax-efficient investment wrappers to a broader demographic of savers. What FF News has reported before. FF News has closely followed Plum's efforts to uncover the impact of UK tax regulations on retail savers. In October 2026, Ascento Capital reported on a Plum FOI Reveals 45,000 Lifetime ISA Savers Hit With Multiple Penalties in Single Year, which detailed how thousands of savers were being penalised for withdrawing funds from their Lifetime ISAs. This highlighted the friction points in the current ISA system that Plum seeks to address through better user education and platform design. Earlier that year, in August 2026, FF News covered a significant technical milestone for the company when Plum Selects Upvest to Power UK Investment Infrastructure in Major Expansion. This move was designed to enhance the app's investment capabilities, allowing for more robust portfolio management as the company expanded its footprint in the UK wealth management sector. What this means. The explosion in ISA millionaire numbers signals a fundamental shift in the UK wealth landscape, moving away from traditional pension-led retirement planning toward tax-efficient investment wrappers. As inheritance tax is set to be applied to pensions in 2027, the ISA's status as a tax-free vehicle for spouses and civil partners makes it an increasingly vital tool for estate planning. This trend puts significant pressure on legacy wealth managers to lower their fees and improve digital accessibility, as retail platforms prove they can facilitate massive capital growth. The industry now faces a critical question: how to maintain this momentum if the government continues to tighten allowances on cash savings and reform the wider ISA framework. Featured speakers.

Neobroker BUX hires Alpaca/Upvest alum Juha Ristolainen as CTO. Amsterdam based neobroker BUX, a unit of ABN Amro, has announced the hiring of Juha Ristolainen as the company's new Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Juha Ristolainen brings over 25 years of software development experience and 15 years in executive leadership to BUX, with a deep background in high-scale financial technology. As the Co-Founder and former CTO of broker infrastructure provider Upvest, he built the backend investment infrastructure powering major neobanks and brokers across Europe, while scaling the engineering team and navigating complex BaFin investment and crypto-custody licensing. Most recently, Juha served as CTO at Alpaca, scaling the global broker-dealer API infrastructure and growing the engineering organisation. Throughout his career building digital products across Europe and the US, Ristolainen has specialised in striking the balance between rapid product agility and strict institutional security. He will be fundamental to BUX in the next phase of growth, leading the engineering and product strategy and delivering its cross country savings proposition. "BUX has made investing simple and accessible, and now we're extending that same clarity to savings across our markets, always built around what customers need." said Juha Ristolainen. "This is the kind of work that first drew me into fintech, and I'm glad to be doing it with a team that's this curious and customer-focused." BUX is a leading European investment platform and challenger brand of ABN AMRO, on a mission to make wealth building easy and affordable for everyone. Through its intuitive mobile investment app, BUX enables investors to build long-term wealth by investing in shares, stocks, ETFs and ETCs, or by investing automatically through pre-built Investment Plans. Building on its investment offering, BUX is expanding its proposition with a comprehensive savings solution, enabling clients to manage both their investments and savings seamlessly within a single app. By combining simple, accessible investing with competitive savings products, BUX is creating an all-in-one platform designed to help more people grow their wealth with confidence. About BUX. BUX, part of ABN AMRO N.V. (AMS:ABN), is one of Europe's leading neo-brokers. BUX provides a versatile investment platform featuring stocks, ETFs, and ETCs, alongside pre-built and custom Investment Plans. With its intuitive mobile investment app, BUX makes investing easier and more affordable for everyone. By simplifying the trading experience, BUX is helping a new generation of investors build long-term wealth and achieve their financial goals. Headquartered in Amsterdam, BUX is currently available in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Austria, and Ireland.

Tomorrow lets retail investors back into its €15 Million Impact fund after two-year freeze. Hamburg-based sustainable banking app Tomorrow opened its in-house equity fund to new purchases on Wednesday, restoring a buy function that has been unavailable since the company moved its securities business to Berlin infrastructure provider lemon.markets in 2024. New customers can now open a securities account and buy into the fund for the first time, the two companies said. The Tomorrow Fund (ISIN: DE000A2QK5D4) held €15.41 million in assets at the end of December 2025, according to fund data published by Das Investment. It launched in June 2021 and is classified as an Article 9 product under the EU's Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation. Annual costs run to roughly 1.5%, made up of 1.2% in management and operating fees and 0.3% in transaction costs. Tomorrow says the portfolio holds more than 70 listed companies, from bicycle component makers to wind turbine specialists. Two Years From Migration to Buy Button lemon.markets took over investment brokerage, trading and custody for Tomorrow in 2024, replacing an arrangement that ran through Solaris SE, Baader Bank and DonauCapital. Solaris continues to handle the banking side. Tomorrow stopped securities account openings in its app on June 11, 2024, migrated existing custody accounts that August, and told customers investing would return in the fall. Holders could keep their shares through the switch but could not buy or sell. Wednesday's announcement does not address the gap between that timetable and the buy function arriving now. Tomorrow did not say how many of its customers hold the fund. The Tomorrow Fund is "now open to everyone who wants to invest in line with their values," Co-Founder and Co-CEO Inas Nureldin said.Co-Founder and Co-CEO Inas Nureldin [#highlighted-links#] A €15 Million Fund Inside a €2.2 Trillion Custody Group lemon.markets is no longer independent. Deutsche WertpapierService Bank completed its purchase of the firm on September 30, 2025, once BaFin cleared the deal, adding an API brokerage platform to a custodian holding €2.2 trillion in assets and processing securities transactions for about two thirds of German banks. lemon.markets dates the tie-up to August 2025 in its own materials. The two businesses kept separate names and sales operations after the deal closed. The Berlin firm has raised more than €28 million since 2020, including a €12 million round led by CommerzVentures. Its clients include Pleo, Holvi and Optio, and it has worked with BNP Paribas and Deutsche Bank on the brokerage-as-a-service product.lemon.markets Founder and Chief Executive Max Linden lemon.markets Founder and Chief Executive Max Linden described the platform as "a modular foundation that grows with partners like Tomorrow." German Infrastructure Rivals Chase Bigger Mandates What separates lemon.markets from its closest domestic competitor is mostly the size of the client. Upvest, founded in Berlin in 2017, processed more than 100 million orders in 2025 against 20 million a year earlier, and serves Revolut, N26, bunq and Santander's Openbank. IG Group signed Upvest to run stock and ETF trading for French customers, and CMC Markets uses the same provider for multi-currency stocks and ETFs in Germany. Upvest raised $125 million at a €640 million valuation in a round led by Sapphire Ventures and Tencent. Alpaca entered the market by buying UK provider WealthKernel and renaming it Alpaca Europe. Tomorrow, which says it has more than 100,000 customers and around 10,000 crowd investors, is a smaller account than the neobanks on Upvest's roster. Second Product Is an ETF Listed Since December Tomorrow customers can also buy the Inyova Impact Investing Active Equity Fund EUR UCITS ETF (ISIN: LU3075459852) from Wednesday. The actively managed fund carries a product cost of 0.95% and accumulates income. Inyova listed it on Deutsche Börse's Xetra in December 2025 and on the SIX Swiss Exchange in January 2026, where Inyova SICAV was the first new ETF issuer of the year. Tomorrow said further investment products will follow. Tomorrow does not hold a banking license of its own. Its transactions run through Solaris SE, which BaFin fined €500,000 in June 2025 for repeatedly breaching large exposure limits between January 2022 and March 2024.