Mikael Tjäder: “We are looking at an expansion in the Nordic region”

Big brands such as PepsiCo and Kraft Heinz are sidestepping retailers during the corona-virus pandemic. According to a recent article in the Financial Times, the companies are taking the opportunity to launch websites in a bid to reach consumers directly rather than relying only on distributors. Swedish Fondab, a daughter company to fund platform MFEX, is on a mission to help fund companies do the same move. Fondab provides IT infrastructure, front- and back-end solutions, access to a large fund universe as well as streamlined reporting and administration on the behalf of its clients. Its story started back in 1999 when Fondmarknaden.se was launched as a platform to offer funds online to end clients. Fairly soon, however, the interest grew for the infrastructure behind it all – to build a digital platform to connect fund companies and distributors. And so MFEX was born. MFEX is the owner of Fondab, which in turn owns the Fondmarknaden.se brand.

The team at Fondab was struggling to grow the Fondmarknaden.se business. It was hit in the IT bubble in the spring of 2000 and a big re-launch of the website in 2008 happened to be in the days leading up to the Lehman crash. For Fondab, things started to move in 2015 when Mikael Tjäder joined the firm and had a discussion with Oliver Lagerström, founder and until recently CEO of MFEX, about how to move forward. ”We had a direct-to-consumer business in Fondmarknaden.se but how do you create growth in that business without a large marketing budget? We simply