M1 Finance Explained

M1 Finance
Type:Privately held company
Founder:Brian Barnes
Hq Location:200 N LaSalle St Ste. 800
Hq Location City:Chicago, Illinois
Hq Location Country:United States
Key People:Brian Barnes (Founder, CEO)
Industry:Fintech
Services:Commercial banking
Stock brokerage
Wealth management
Electronic trading platform
Products:M1 Borrow
M1 Invest
M1 Spend
Aum:$8.0 Billion USD (2024)
Members:500,000
Members Year:2021
Num Employees:300
Num Employees Year:2021
Parent:M1 Holdings Inc.

M1 Finance (commonly abbreviated as M1) is an American financial services company that offers a robo-advisory investment platform with brokerage accounts, digital checking accounts, and lines of credit. M1 offers an electronic trading platform for the trade of financial assets including common stocks, preferred stocks, fractional-share ownership, and exchange-traded funds. It also provides margin lending, automatic rebalancing services, automatic dividend reinvestment services, and cash management services including debit cards.

The company receives payment for order flow, makes revenue from interest on margin loans, subscription fees, and interchange fees from its credit card.[1] The platform has over $6 billion in assets under management.[2] M1's headquarters is located in Chicago, Illinois., the company had over 500,000 members.

Part of M1 Finance's investment strategy involves micro-investing. It allows users to select a portfolio and have the platform automatically invest additional funds in pre-defined ratios using fractional share ownership.

History

The company was founded in 2015 by Brian Barnes in Chicago.

Micro investing service

Micro-investing refers to investing small amounts of money, usually in the range of a few dollars to a few hundred dollars, into financial assets such as stocks, mutual funds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), or other investment vehicles.

Micro-investing increased in popularity in the 2020s in part due to the rise of mobile apps that make it easy and accessible for people to invest small amounts of money with low fees using fractional shares. Micro-investing makes it easier for individuals to build a diversified investment portfolio and start investing even with limited funds.[3] [4]

Notes and References

  1. News: A Broker for the New App Economy . Tritsch . Shane . . March 28, 2019 . subscription.
  2. Web site: M1 Finance raises $150M in SoftBank-led Series E, boosts valuation to $1.45B. 2021-07-19. TechCrunch. en-US.
  3. Web site: Aaron . Lucchetti . E-Tailers Allow Buyers to Add Fund Investments to Carts . 2023-04-20 . WSJ . en-US.
  4. Web site: The Innovators – Meet the 65 Companies and Their Owners Who Have Conjured Up the Latest Wave of Products, Services, and Technologies . May 1, 2001 . 2023-04-20 . money.cnn.com.