XTB will spend more on marketing in Germany this year than at home in Poland, Chief Executive Omar Arnaout said. The Warsaw-listed broker is pushing into the home turf of Trade Republic, the German neobroker that walked into Poland last year.

Arnaout, speaking to Polish outlet Bankier.pl, framed the heavier German spend as brand-building in a market where XTB is still little known. He said the amount stays well below what larger global rivals lay out.

Each Broker Pushes Into the Other’s Backyard

The contest now runs in two directions. Trade Republic entered Poland in September 2025, its first market outside the eurozone, arriving with more than 10 million customers across 18 European markets and about €150 billion in assets.

Arnaout said XTB will “spend more on marketing in Germany than in Poland” this year, building its name in the home market of the rival that is now competing with it in Warsaw.

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The push sits inside a wider goal of becoming the default investing app for European retail clients, an aim that depends on markets beyond Poland.

Poland Pays the Bills, Western Europe Drives the Growth

XTB does not break out Germany on its own. Poland is the only country it isolates in its accounts, at 54.4% of group revenue in 2025, while Germany sits inside a Western Europe region that also covers France, Spain and Portugal.

That region is where the figures are moving fastest. Western Europe revenue rose 8.9% to PLN 387.4 million in 2025, active clients there climbed to about 301,000, a quarter of the retail base, and retail volume in lots jumped 74.5%.

XTB’s record first quarter ran largely on Central and Eastern Europe, which delivered 71% of group revenue, leaving the western markets as the obvious place to add scale.

The marketing tilt feeds a hard number. Arnaout wants 250,000 to 290,000 new clients a quarter in 2026, roughly a million in a year, with promotional spending up about 50%.

XTB added more than 860,000 clients in 2025 and ended the year above 2 million globally, but it needed more than two decades to reach its first million domestic accounts.

Germany Is Crowded Before XTB Arrives

Germany is among the hardest neobroker markets in Europe to break into. Trade Republic anchors it from home with bonds, ETFs and private equity access from as little as €1, while Munich’s Scalable Capital charges a €2.99 monthly subscription.

Both built their businesses on payment for order flow, a practice the EU bans from June 30, 2026, pushing German platforms to find fresh income before the cutoff.

XTB’s wedge into the market is options. The broker launched buy-only options in Germany and Spain in April 2026, covering 110 US-listed stocks and ETFs, and Jens Chrzanowski, who runs its German branch, casts the firm as a “super app” that bundles investing, savings and payments rather than a single-purpose broker.

It will not have the country to itself. CMC Markets moved into Germany’s certificates market in May as BaFin weighs tighter rules, and Robinhood has pushed venture funds and crypto across the continent.

Regulatory Friction at Home Shapes the Push Abroad

The expansion runs against a tense backdrop in Poland. KNF fined XTB PLN 20 million ($5.5 million) over MiFID II breaches in its client onboarding, a penalty disclosed in April that the broker is contesting through a reconsideration request.

XTB says the questionnaire and onboarding flow at issue have already been changed.

The regulator is also widening a review of how CFDs are sold. “The capital market cannot function like gambling,” KNF vice-chairman Dariusz Adamski said, signaling it wants to stop firms moving clients from simple products toward complex ones.

Arnaout rejected the idea that XTB does any such steering. He said 80% of new clients start with stocks and ETFs, that only 13.5% of them have ever placed a CFD trade, and that clients who fail the knowledge test cannot buy the product at all. He also argued that Polish firms face an uneven field, noting XTB cannot offer crypto to local clients while foreign rivals can.

XTB has now written options into its Polish terms of service, effective June 29, closing the gap that left its home market the last to get the product. The broker has not said when Polish clients will actually be able to trade it.

With the domestic account engine showing signs of cooling, Germany and the rest of Western Europe look set to carry more of the weight behind XTB’s next million clients.

This article was written by Damian Chmiel at www.financemagnates.com.AnalysisRead More

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