Who is best to invest with?

When you start investing, you also need to decide who’s best to do it with. There are different types of providers: asset managers, brokers, and banks. Each has its own approach and advantages. Which provider suits you depends on a few key questions: do you want to do everything yourself or would you prefer someone else to do it? Do you choose active investing or passively following the market? Costs also play an important role, as they differ per category and directly impact your ultimate return. In this article, we’ll clearly outline the choices and providers.

Goed om te weten: beleggen brengt risico’s met zich mee. Je kunt een deel van je inleg verliezen. Resultaten die in het verleden werden behaald, bieden geen garantie dat die in de toekomst ook behaald kunnen worden. De informatie in onze blogs is algemeen en geen persoonlijk beleggingsadvies.

Do it Yourself or Have it Done: Bank, Broker, or Asset Manager

If you want to invest on your own, it involves quite a bit. You need to figure out what and when to invest in yourself, for example in stocks, bonds, real estate, or derivative products like ETFs (funds that combine multiple investments). For this, you need a clear strategy, so you make wise choices and don’t let yourself be guided by emotions or various suggestions. In short: to invest on your own, you need knowledge, time, and patience. You can invest on your own with a broker and usually also with your own bank.

Another option is investing through an asset manager or bank. Then you usually don’t determine the strategy yourself, but they do it for you. They also execute the transactions. Often, your money is then invested in investment funds or a number of ETFs. The advantage of this is that it requires less of your attention.

Investment Strategy: Active or Passive Investing

Before you start investing, you need to consider your strategy. As a passive investor, you follow a general market (for example, the global stock markets, or the AEX), if you’re an active investor, you make your own choice in which stocks or other financial instruments you want to invest.

For most investors, passive investing is the sensible choice: low costs, little hassle, lower risk, and research shows that it usually provides a better return than active investing.

Read the article Active or passive investing

Providers

Below you can see which type of provider you can turn to, depending on whether you want to invest yourself or prefer to have someone else do it.

Costs

The level of costs has more influence on your ultimate return than you might think. The less you pay, the more is left for you – logical. But this effect compounds: if you got less return last year due to high costs, your assets will also grow less this year.

Suppose you invest €1,000 each year for 20 years and achieve an average return of 7%. If you pay 1.25% costs per year instead of 0.25%, you’ll end up with over €4,000 less.

The costs differ significantly per provider. Sometimes it’s difficult to get a complete overview of them. So pay close attention, because before you know it, you’re paying more than you initially thought.

Broker Costs

Are you investing through a broker or investing yourself through your bank? Then you usually pay transaction costs for buying and selling your investments. If you invest in funds or ETFs, the costs of those funds or ETFs are added on top. You can find the costs of a fund or ETF in the Eid, which are published by the providers on their website.

Asset Manager Costs

If you choose an asset manager, you pay management fees for managing your portfolio. Usually, an asset manager also passes on certain costs to you, such as costs for buying and selling investments and the costs of funds they invest in for you (such as ETFs).

Cost Comparison

We’ve made a clear cost comparison with all known providers of passive investment strategies for you on our cost page. There you can see the total costs per provider, including transaction costs and costs of underlying funds.

Which Provider Suits You?

Research shows that passive investing is the best choice for most investors: higher chance of a good return, less risk, and hardly any time commitment. Passive investing can be done through an asset manager, a fund from your bank, or by buying ETFs yourself through a broker. Whichever route you choose, don’t forget that costs are often decisive for your return in the long term.

UpToMore is an asset manager that has selected very advantageous ETFs for you. This allows you to invest not only very easily, but also at extremely low costs. All you need to do is deposit or withdraw money.