although RBS is a white label, and Barclays too iirc..but yep for white labels, that rely on SB as their sole income, it's a slow death IMHO.
This is what it says on RBS spread-betting:
Financial Spread Betting services are provided by CMC Spreadbet Plc (trading as RBS Spread Trading) to whom you have been introduced by NatWest Stockbrokers Limited.
[...]
So their spread-betting is a white label of CMC.
For Barclays, it says:
Barclays Stockbrokers CFDs and Barclays Stockbrokers Financial Spread Trading services are trading names of City Index Limited (CI) whose registered office is Park House, Finsbury Circus, London EC2M 7EB.
So they are a white label of City Index.
I just mention that in case anyone got the impression that they were white labels of LCG. (I'm not saying that that is what you said, Black Swan, but people sometimes get the wrong end of the stick, especially where white labels are concerned, or so it seems).
However, when you say ....
but yep for white labels, that rely on SB as their sole income, it's a slow death IMHO.
....I wonder why? For a start, none of them relies on SB as their sole income. That is to say, it might be that the spread-betting is isolated from their core business, and run as a separate business, but most of them seem to be spun off a much larger business, as is the case with the two above.
But even if it were, I don't see that it's a bad business model at all.
The business that is taking most of the risk, as I see it, is the company running the trading platform. If it makes a profit, it has to pay a commission to the company "owning" the white label (i.e. RBS or Barclays in the above cases), which they get for doing very little. If it makes a loss, then presumably it just has to stand that loss (unless their agreement states otherwise). The platform-running customer benefits from getting more customers to its trading platform (recruited by the white label, although it may be a fairly passive form of recruitment....existing customers who feel like branching out), so it's pretty much a win-win, provided the trading platform company (i.e. CMC and City Index in the above cases), know what it is doing.
