As the coronavirus pandemic continues to rock the U.S. economy, the volume of trade on the Ally Invest platform has skyrocketed 300% year over year in March to record levels, Senior Director Frank Lietke told Bank Innovation.

Ally Invest, the brokerage arm of Ally Financial, is a web-based wealth management platform that offers two services: self-directed trading and managed portfolios via a robo-adviser functionality. Launched in 2017, Ally Invest’s customer brokerage accounts total $7.9 billion in assets, according to the company website. As a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, Ally Invest has waived broker-assisted trade fees for all users, which hover around $20.

“During this period of volatility, consumers are still exhibiting confidence in the market,” Lietke said, noting that more than 60% of trades have been on the buy side. “If I read into that a little bit, I think people are still seeing this as an opportunity. If the market’s going down, the fundamentals might still be there in the background,” he said.

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To accommodate the surge in traffic, Ally Invest’s tech team introduced extra monitoring, testing and quality assurance checkpoints before and after market close to triage any issues that arise, Lietke said. The team also works in an agile environment, which has allowed them to scale up the platform as necessary. 

There’s also been an uptick in engagement in coronavirus-effected equities, Lietke said. U.S.-based airlines, including American Airlines, Delta and Boeing, are some of the most highly traded ticker symbols on the platform, along with Carnival Cruise and the web conferencing platform Zoom.

In addition to record trade volume, this month Ally Invest has seen a 30% to 50% increase in new user acquisition compared with prior-year periods, depending on the week, Lietke said. As of the week ending March 27, Ally Invest self-directed traders notched a total of more than 350,000 accounts. Most of those new users are customers of the bank, he said, adding that Ally will continue to market the platform across all of the bank’s services.