Q: Risks

General You should be aware that all investing in financial instruments contains an element of risk. The value of your investments can go down as well as up, so you could get back less than you invested, or in some cases, you may lose your entire investment. Past performance also is not an indication of future performance for an Instrument. Advice Please also keep in mind that as of right now Lightyear does not offer investment advice. This means that we do not assess if our services or instruments are suitable or appropriate for you. Hence, you should always ensure that your investment decisions are in line with your risk tolerance, knowledge and experience. Our Risk Disclosure provides an overview of what risks using investment services entail, including risks related to specific instrument types. Please read through this document carefully before starting to invest so you can make informed decisions. In addition to that, please also take a look at our Target Market Matrix . Target Market Matrix showcases who are each category of financial instruments meant for - what type of risk tolerance you should have, your ability to bear losses, knowledge and experience, investor type, time horizon, objectives, etc. This matrix can be found right at the top of the Risk Disclosure page.

Question 1

Onboarding & using the services

Accepted Answer

To use our services, you must first onboard as our customer. Lightyear is a financial institution, which means that we have various regulatory obligations to ensure that our customers use our services for legitimate purposes. This is why we also ask about your contact information & some other personal data, such as for example:

Your full name, place of residence & date of birth;
Your citizenship & tax-related details;
Where do your funds originate from - salary, investments or something else?

If you are onboarding your business, we also ask information about your company's business activity in addition to corporate and other details! We must understand who both our business and natural person customers are.

Some of this information we also need to verify with documented proof. Please be assured that we are very careful and diligent on how we handle and store your personal information. All the details around that are laid out in our Privacy Policy.

Once you have completed your onboarding, you are welcome to deposit & start using our services. You can deposit money to us from your bank account or debit card. Please do keep in mind that you can deposit money only from your own accounts that you hold on your name. We do not allow deposits or withdrawals from/to accounts belonging to someone else.

If you have any questions, we recommend you also check out our Help Centre & specific page around deposits and withdrawals.

Question 2

Our services

Accepted Answer

Using the Lightyear platform, you can:

Invest in US, UK, and a diverse selection of EU stocks (including Spain, Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and more), as well as bonds from the Baltics (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania). We are continuously expanding our platform with new instruments!
Invest in most common ETFs that track major indexes, as well as in money-market funds (depending availability in your country)
Hold your uninvested cash with us & accrue interest on that cash (details available on our Pricing page)
See all kinds of information on stocks, including analyst ratings, financial performance, etc., that enable you to make informed investment decisions!

Through us you can submit market, limit and stop orders. We make investing available using our partners to bring you EU, US & UK stocks and EU ETFs. Please read more in our Order Handling and Best Execution Policy.

The Lightyear platform is available both on web and mobile (iOS and Android).

Question 3

Pricing and interest rates

Accepted Answer

Customers are at the center of everything we do and our pricing structure reflects that. We charge the smallest amount possible in order to execute at the highest standard and build a sustainable business. Please check out our pricing & interest rate details here.

Question 4

Risks

Accepted Answer

General

You should be aware that all investing in financial instruments contains an element of risk.
The value of your investments can go down as well as up, so you could get back less than you invested, or in some cases, you may lose your entire investment.
Past performance also is not an indication of future performance for an Instrument.

Advice

Please also keep in mind that as of right now Lightyear does not offer investment advice. This means that we do not assess if our services or instruments are suitable or appropriate for you. Hence, you should always ensure that your investment decisions are in line with your risk tolerance, knowledge and experience.

Our Risk Disclosure provides an overview of what risks using investment services entail, including risks related to specific instrument types. Please read through this document carefully before starting to invest so you can make informed decisions.

In addition to that, please also take a look at our Target Market Matrix. Target Market Matrix showcases who are each category of financial instruments meant for - what type of risk tolerance you should have, your ability to bear losses, knowledge and experience, investor type, time horizon, objectives, etc. This matrix can be found right at the top of the Risk Disclosure page.

Question 5

Key contractual provisions

Accepted Answer

Comprehensive overview of our Terms of Service is available here. Information you should know before entering into an agreement with us is available in the "Pre-contractual Information and Important Declarations" document, which you can find in the next section below. For ease of use, we have gathered some of the key provisions also to this page.

By agreeing to our Terms of Service, we conclude an agreement for an unlimited term. You may terminate this agreement at any time and for any reason by giving us a notice via email at support@lightyear.com. To terminate your account, you need to close any open positions you have.
As a rule, we provide you with our services, information and legal documents in English. There may be exceptions to that and we are looking to localize our services also in other languages. However, if that is the case, legal documents in other languages are treated as translations and in case of inconsistencies, the English version shall prevail.
As we are an Estonian broker, the agreement between us, activities on the platform and transactions are all governed by and construed in accordance with Estonian law.
Connected to above, if you have a complaint you can first contact us by emailing support@lightyear.com. If we are unable to resolve your complaint, you may turn to Estonian Consumer Protection & Technical Regulatory Authority (www.ttja.ee/en) or Estonian Financial Supervision and Resolution Authority (www.fi.ee). More information is available in our Complaints Policy.
By using our services, you agree that we may keep your instrument in an omnibus or nominee account (those are specific kinds of securities accounts in which assets of multiple investors or stocks belonging to customers are held separately from Lightyear's own assets). Please see our Help Centre for more information around asset protection.
By using our services, you agree that we may hold your money in the shares or units of money market funds. We shall only hold your money in money market funds that are of high quality, assessed as such by relevant agencies and our internal credit quality assessment. Please see our Help Centre for more information around asset protection.

Question 6

Links to relevant documents

Accepted Answer

Here are most important documents that govern our relationship with you and our services in general:

Terms of Service is the agreement you agree with in order to onboard to Lightyear platform and to use our services. It stipulates rights and obligations of both you and us, Lightyear. We strongly recommend to read through the Terms of Service before using our services. Our terms for business customers are available separately. Our Terms of Service are also translated to select other languages, which all can be found below in the next section.
Order Handling & Best Execution Policy governs on how we approach to handling the orders to buy financial instruments you can submit via the Lightyear platform. With US financial instruments, Lightyear transmits your orders to our partner broker Alpaca, which means that order will eventually be executed by Alpaca or their respective partner. With EU & UK financial instrument, we execute (fulfil) the order ourselves, together with our partner broker ABN AMRO. Order Handling and Best Execution Policy is translated also to select other languages, available in the next section below.
List of Execution Venues and Brokers of Lightyear Europe AS lists trading venues to which Lightyear has (in)direct access to. Financial instruments are tradable on such trading venues and in order to introduce financial instruments of any particular country / venue, Lightyear must have direct or indirect access to it. Lightyear continuously works on expanding its instrument offering, which also includes adding access to new trading venues. This document also lists our third party broker(s) through which we can offer US financial instruments.
Risk Disclosure provides a general description of the nature and risks related to investing and different types of financial instruments. Its very important that you understand relevant risks before you invest in any financial instruments, so we strongly recommend on reading this document before using our platform. This document is also translated to select other languages, available below.
Target Market Matrix showcases who are each category of financial instruments meant for - what type of risk tolerance you should have, your ability to bear losses, knowledge and experience, investor type, time horizon, objectives, etc. This matrix can be found right at the top of the Risk Disclosure page.
Privacy Policy details the personal information we collect and use, how we look after it and the circumstances in which we may share it with someone else. It also sets out your rights around how we handle your information.
Cookie Policy details on what kinds of website cookies do we use & how long they are stored if you consent to those.
Complaints Policy describes our complaint handling procedure and your associated rights, including your right to escalate the complaint to certain authorities.
Conflicts of Interest Policy explains the nature of possible conflicts that may arise when providing our services and how do we mitigate such risks.
Signup Promotion terms govern timed sign-up promotions offered by Lightyear or Lightyear's affiliate partners from time to time.
Refer a Friend terms explains our referral scheme terms, including any seasonal or temporary referral promotions we run.
Gift Voucher terms outlines Lightyear's gift voucher scheme.

Question 7

Legal documents in all languages

Accepted Answer

Here we provide key legal documents also in several selected languages. Documents on this page are direct translations of their original counterparts in English. In case of discrepancies between the translated and English documents, the English documents shall prevail.

English (Business Account)

Business Accounts are now available in limited jurisdiction(s) only.

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Business Terms of Service (7.11.2023)

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Hungarian

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German

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Lithuanian

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Slovene

Important Information

Onboarding & using the services

Our services

Pricing and interest rates

Risks

Key contractual provisions

Links to relevant documents

Legal documents in all languages

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