lemon.markets

Market insights 📈 Last week’s German budget announcement made one thing clear: for now, the Frühstart-Rente is only planned for the single, youngest age group. While this is a start, it is also the right moment to take a stance on how the Frühstart-Rente and a future retirement savings account (Altersvorsorgedepot) should be designed to truly strengthen Germany’s retirement system. Building on his recent opinion piece in Payment & Banking - PBA Experts GmbH, our Founder & CEO, Max Linden, sees five key principles: Seamless access, early on: Every child should receive a fully digital investment account from birth. Saving for retirement should feel as simple as using a bank account. Capital markets instead of guarantees: Contribution guarantees hold back returns, as ETF-Riester showed. Public incentives should work without guarantees so people can participate in capital markets more effectively. Seamless transition at adulthood: At adulthood, the children’s account should automatically turn into a retirement savings account (Altersvorsorgedepot). No losses, no breaks, no extra paperwork. Flexible use in retirement: People should choose how to access their savings, for example via payout plans or partial withdrawals from a set age. Retirement products need to reflect different life realities. Voluntary top ups by families: Parents and grandparents should be able to pay in extra, even without state subsidies. That makes retirement saving a joint family effort and strengthens compound returns from day one. From this perspective, the Frühstart-Rente is a welcomed first step, but it will not solve our pension challenge on its own. Now is the time to use this momentum for a broader, more inclusive reform that truly strengthens Germany’s retirement system for future generations. See comments for the link to the full article 📖 We believe in giving everyone access to the capital markets. Let us know your thoughts on the topic. LMG! 🍋

As lemon.markets continues to grow, we’re strengthening our People & Talent team so we can further amplify and scale our initiatives. This month, we’re thrilled to welcome two new lemoneers to the team! 🎉 Karoline Fröbel joins us as our second Talent Partner, joining Melissa Lambraño in driving all aspects related to Talent Acquisition. From hiring exceptional lemoneers across various business functions, to evolving our employer branding strategy and designing scalable recruiting processes, Karoline is here to help us grow and preserve our high talent density. Antara Diwadkar joins us as a Working Student, supporting the People Team across operational, analytical, strategic and financial tasks. Working closely with our Senior People & Culture Manager Laura Promny, Antara will play a key role in ensuring our People processes scale effectively. Karoline and Antara, welcome to the team, we are excited to have you on board. Want to contribute to growing investing opportunities across Europe? We are currently hiring for various roles, see the link in the comments 🚀 LMG 🍋!

Last week we had the immense pleasure of hosting Lennard Schmidt, the Founder and CEO of Langdock, in our Berlin HQ 🍋. As we are big users & fans of Langdock, this was a particularly insightful lemon.talk for us. Lennard shared his journey from a CODE student, through a CFO role at the same university, all the way up to his idea of enabling AI adoption for companies. In a lively conversation with our founder, Max, Lennard covered everything from org design and hiring focus, to compliant tooling and why simple processes beat complex frameworks when you’re moving fast. Here are some takeaways from the talk, the rest we will leave for ourselves 😉 AI adoption in practice 💡 The value of AI is proven, yet the real blocker is internal adoption and stakeholder requirements. Langdock’s response was to build a model‑agnostic, centrally managed, compliant AI chat that companies can roll out to all employees, creating a secure starting point for change. From there, people can actually realize value in their day-to-day by tapping into existing data and workflows, turning AI from a tech topic into one of organizational change. Empowering agent owners for AI management 🧑💻 Lennard shared how organisations empower “agent owners” - dedicated team members responsible for maintaining prompts, models, and context for AI agents. By investing in structured documentation and standard operating procedures, businesses can ensure their AI tools operate effectively while driving adoption across teams. Efficiency beats scale 📈 AI adoption is all about showing how fewer people can achieve more, often outperforming bigger teams. Langdock’s approach demonstrates how leveraging AI assistants for tasks like SQL queries, hiring workflows, and automated sales processes creates operational efficiency, enabling teams to focus on high-impact work. Thank you Lennard for sharing your inspiring journey and valuable insights with us lemoneers. We’re excited to hear what’s up next in the Langdock story and excited to continue driving AI adoption together! 💛

A new chapter for multi-asset-investing in Europe: Vivid Money x lemon.markets! 🍋 We're thrilled to announce that lemon.markets is partnering with Vivid Money, a leading European financial platform for SMEs and freelancers, to set a new standard for multi-asset investing across Europe. Through this collaboration, Vivid integrates lemon.markets’ scalable, API-based brokerage and custody infrastructure to offer its business and retail customers access to an expanded range of investment opportunities. Starting with Money Market Funds (MMFs) and mutual funds, and later expanding to additional asset classes over time. This partnership lays the foundation for faster product launches, broader diversification and seamless access to multi-asset investing across Europe. It’s a great example of how our infrastructure enables partners to build scalable, digital investment solutions that truly serve their customers’ needs. PS: If you want to help us grow investing opportunities across Europe, we’re hiring, see the link in the comments. 🚀

Meet our newest lemoneers! 🎉 This month we have two strong additions joining us helping us shape the future of investing infrastructure across Europe: Sebastian Sandoval Similä joins us as Senior Product Manager on the Banking Team. With deep experience in the financial markets he’ll focus on critical flows such as deposits, settlements and money movements. Jachym Stary is strengthening our Investing Team as a Product Manager, where he’ll be building out our investing stack. Handling everything from how we handle orders, through growing available investing opportunities, to detailed reporting. Welcome, Sebastian and Jachym! We’re thrilled to have you on board. Let’s keep growing investing opportunities together. LMG! 🍋

🎙️ Our Founder & CEO, Max Linden, recently joined Kristina Lindenbaum, Executive Board Member at Deutsche WertpapierService Bank AG, on the Plaudertaschen | Banking von morgen podcast to talk about what’s next for capital markets. This episode kicks off with a big milestone: the completed acquisition of lemon.markets by dwpbank. Kristina and Max join host Robin Nehring to discuss how bringing the two together blends tech and trust to meet evolving customer needs. Whether that’s simple ETF savings plans, fractionals or more complex wealth and private banking solutions. By combining dwpbank’s long-standing expertise and stability with lemon.markets’ technology-first mindset and speed, we are building a modern, modular securities services ecosystem. Together, we are creating segment-specific solutions that span from global full-custody to neobrokerage, enabling financial institutions to respond faster, serve clients more flexibly and unlock new opportunities in a changing market. Curious to hear more? Tune in to the episode and join us on our journey of enabling anyone to be an investor 👉 Link in the comments.

📈 How many people in Germany are really investing? A question with many different answers and one we set out to explore. Together with our friends at Smartbroker AG, we dug deep into Deutsche Bundesbank data to understand the true momentum behind Germany’s investing boom. The result? A data-driven study that sheds light on how, where, and by whom securities accounts are being opened. Here’s what we found: 🇩🇪 The number of securities accounts held by private households has grown by 53% since 2015, reaching 34.4 million by the end of 2024 - that’s almost 12 million new accounts in ten years. 📈 The growth is driven by the non-major banks segment, which contains digital players such as neobrokers and direct banks like Trade Republic and ING, while traditional banks and savings institutions are losing ground. 👥  Based on our study, we estimate that around 17.2 million Germans, so roughly one in five adults, are currently investing, reflecting a broad and growing participation. 📱The data clearly shows how digitalization and mobile-first investing have made capital markets accessible to new audiences, especially younger investors. But - this is just the beginning. As more people take charge of their financial futures, it’s our collective responsibility within the financial industry to sustain this momentum. Together, we can help embed a culture of investing that empowers future generations to build wealth and achieve long-term financial security. 👉 Want to dive deeper into the insights? Check out our press release in the comments.

For us, offsites are more than just a change of scenery. They’re where culture gets a tune-up, ideas gain momentum, and collaboration takes centre stage. Last week, we brought our 70+ lemoneers to the beautiful Wolziger See for our bi-annual company offsite. Over four days, we zoomed out to reflect on where we’ve come from, whilst zooming in on where we stand today and what’s next. From refining our guiding principles to aligning on clear priorities, this offsite marked a shared reset. Emerging with stronger foundations, sharper focus and a playbook that scales with us. ✨ By day: A one-day hackathon challenged us to build tools and processes that better serve our partners and fellow lemoneers. From scrappy prototypes to “we should actually ship this” moments, it was fast and focused. 🎤 By night: Karaoke hits, handcrafted lemon keychains and creativity in all its forms. ⛵️ On the water: Sailing sessions reminded us that great product sense sometimes starts with reading the wind. 🏓 On the court: The Finance team claimed the ping-pong trophy (for now). BizDev, your serve. Here’s to bolder execution, sharper principles and a little more karaoke courage. If you want to join our mission of growing investing opportunities for all European customers and businesses, we're hiring across many roles. Check out our open positions! Link in the comments below. LMG! 🍋

What a day at BEX - Banking Exchange! On Tuesday Laura Cüppers, our VP Brokerage, joined a powerhouse lineup to dig into where finance is headed, especially the future of ETF savings plans. Huge thanks to the organizers, to Sophie Osen Akhibi for brilliant moderation, and to panelists Chris Puellen (NaroIQ) and Robin Binder (NAO) for the insightful debate. ETF savings plans are mainstream: affordable, convenient, easy. But have we reached the peak or is this the beginning of something even bigger? The discussion tracked ETFs’ shift from “passive” wrappers to active, thematic and sustainable strategies. Speakers weighed passive’s limits, the role of financial education and whether products will soon adapt to better fit different life stages. Key takeaways from Laura? ETFs aren’t everywhere yet: they only make up 10–15% of fund assets in Germany, so there’s plenty of room for growth as awareness and ease of access improve. But why? 📈 Momentum is strong: The German ETF market grew roughly 33% last year. We enable this growth by providing the API infrastructure that helps companies launch investment products quickly. 🔄 “Passive” is evolving: ETFs are more than just passive funds - they are shifting from simple index trackers to sophisticated products like active ETFs, thematic funds and sustainable strategies. 🇩🇪 The investment gap is big: Only about 17% of Germans invest, showing the importance of financial education and intuitive products. 🚀 We need to break down barriers: Remove technical and regulatory hurdles so our partners can build tailored, engaging solutions that prove great products win. What were your highlights from BEX - Banking Exchange? If you’re building investment products and want to move faster, let’s talk. LMG! 🍋

Fresh faces, fresh energy - meet our newest lemoneers! 🍋 We’re excited to welcome four new lemoneers to the team, each bringing a unique mix of experience, curiosity and motivation! 🎉 Natalia Romanoff joins us as a Founder’s Associate Intern from Helsinki, where she’s completing her MSc in Economics & Business Administration. She brings experience in Key Account Management and Business Development, and will be working across core areas such as GTM and Automation. Amir Elgayed comes onboard as a Senior Backend Engineer on our Banking Team. With a strong background in software development across the pharmaceutical and FinTech sectors, he’ll focus on building scalable systems that power our next stage of growth. Lorenzo Bosio joins as a Founder’s Associate Intern, originally from Blumenau, Brazil – home to the second-largest Oktoberfest in the world. With experience in hospitality, CRM marketing, and event ops, he’ll support strategic and operational initiatives across multiple functions. Bruno Podsiadło is also strengthening our Founder’s Associate Intern team. With a background in social entrepreneurship and innovation consulting, he brings curiosity and drive to the table. In his role, he will support cross-functional projects, driving growth and operational excellence. Welcome to the team Amir, Lorenzo, Natalia and Bruno! Let’s grow investing opportunities together. LMG! 🍋