Until very recently, if you were wanting to buy shares in American companies like Apple, Facebook, Google or Tesla it is quite amazing how hard it could be.You needed either to be buying an awful lot, so to make sense of the massive fees of using a local bank share-trading service as a broker, or you needed to navigate a confusing and bewildering process to get access to an international broking platform, and then all the tax and hassle around that. It is not recommended.

And now, an innovative new platform has started up to solve the problem, offering access to US shares and exchange traded funds with brokerage fees at an order of magnitude under the existing big bank status quo. Which may make it surprising that this start up has come from the same holding company as …a big bank! It’s called Hatch, and is from Kiwi Wealth, the sister company to Kiwi Bank, and is a product of their focus on innovation.

Because the big banking sector is ripe for disruption, and big change is coming with open banking already changing the fee and service landscape around the world. It’s very cool to see that coming from inside a bank. The general manager of Hatch, Kristen Lunman, and the head of experience Natalie Ferguson have made it their business to do just that. Working first with the Kiwibank Fintech accelerator, and then in the Kiwi Wealth Innovation Lab resulting in this game changer.A disclaimer is that I am a user, but only out of wanting and finding the service and then asking them on once seeing how interesting the background was.

To talk the service, opening up investment opportunities and innovating in a bank environment, Natalie Ferguson and Kristen Lunman join us n

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