If one of your New Year’s goals is to start investing in shares, and you will be an Air Bank client at the same time, you will not need to download any other application or open an account with a specialized service. At the turn of the year, Air Bank will launch the option to invest in specific shares of leading American companies as well as several exchange-traded funds, so-called ETFs. Česká banka, which belongs to the PPF investment group of the Kellner family, responds to the growing demand of Czechs for investments and wants to offer them the easiest possible entry into the stock world. According to her research, there are up to three million people on the market who either do not invest at all or only invest in funds. And he wants to address you.
“We are seeing a growing demand for investment options from our clients, which is why we are introducing a new service that simplifies the world of equity investing. Clients can clearly see the development of the investment in the My Air application together with other banking services.” says Petr Žabža, head of Air Bank’s Investment department. “The service will be accessible to the general public and clients will be able to easily manage their portfolio. The minimum investment amount is set at 1,000 crowns, and investors can also buy fractions of shares.” supplies.
Investing in shares will only be possible in the Air Bank mobile application, which, according to the bank’s representatives, is used by roughly four fifths of all more than 1.1 million clients. It will also be easy to sign up for the service. Also thanks to the fact that Air Bank does not provide clients with any investment advice and everyone invests for themselves in specific titles, there is no need to fill out a complex questionnaire. The user only has to tick a few forms, while the bank already has all the necessary personal documents and other data about him. You can also invest in euros or dollars on the relevant currency account. In the case of crowns, the bank always automatically performs the exchange at the time of purchase according to its current tariff.
Apple, Tesla and the S&P 500
The offer will include the shares of two hundred American companies traded on the NYSE and Nasdaq exchanges, so titles such as Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta or Tesla will not be missing. It will also be possible to invest in so-called fractions, i.e. only part of the entire shares. For example, one share of the legendary investor Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate is worth over half a million dollars (over 12 million crowns). Thanks to factions, however, you can buy a part of this share for just the aforementioned thousand crowns.
In addition, Air Bank will also offer twenty exchange-traded funds known as ETFs. Their composition usually copies popular stock indices such as the S&P 500 or Nasdaq 100. These will be ETFs from the German market and the XETRA trading system, including ETFs that copy the development of the S&P 500. In the future, Air Bank would also like to add shares from the Prague Stock Exchange, where people can trade with CEZ shares or large banks, but is now waiting for a technical solution that would enable fractional investing.
Photo: Air Bank / CzechCrunch
Air Bank launches equity investment
The proposition of the new Air Bank service is to make it even simpler than the Revolut application, which customers in the Czech Republic often use today when they want to invest in specific shares as easily as possible. “We compete more with Revolut in terms of simplicity, and with other banks in terms of fees. We believe we can deliver a better, more fun and cheaper solution than the competition.” explains Petr Žabža.
When buying shares through Air Bank, which cooperates with the Interactive Brokers brokerage platform in this regard, the user will pay a flat fee. This will be either 0.2 percent of the total volume of the completed transaction, or at least two dollars or five euros, i.e. 45 or 120 crowns. Keeping an investment account, to which it is possible to send money from both a current and a savings account, will be completely free.
On the one hand, Air Bank could acquire some Revolut customers, but at the same time it also wants to reach clients of other banks. After all, the Czech market does not yet offer similar investments in shares. Investment platforms are available in various forms at Fio banka, ČSOB and its Patria or Raiffeisenbank, but these are usually more complex or expensive services. “We mainly want to be a simple platform for making the purchase itself,” says Petr Žabža.
Therefore, at launch, only a limited number of titles will be on offer, as well as no large details about individual shares, such as a graph of their price development or other indicators such as market value, dividend yield or P/E ratio. Advanced instructions for buying or selling, for example, in a situation where the price of the share falls below a certain level, will not be available at least at the start. Due to the simplicity of the entire product, the new service does not even have to compete with the Portu investment platform from the Wood & Company group, which has been integrated directly into the Air Bank application for the third year.
Read alsoZonky merged with Air Bank. He continues to teach the Czechs to invest and wants to lend moreInstead of expanding, Zonky merged with Air Bank. Together, they continue to teach the Czechs how to invest and want to lend more
“Both services do not compete in principle. As part of our proposition, Portu is a digital asset manager for long-term investing, building a financial cushion and, in principle, maintenance-free management. Investing in specific shares in Air Bank will be the first entry into the world of investments for many people.” explains Žabža. As part of investments or capital appreciation, the bank from the PPF group also offers the Zonky platform, where individual customers borrow directly from each other, or traditional instruments such as mutual funds.
“We don’t want to tie the client to one solution, we want to offer services that are closest to him, whether in terms of risk or potential return. Zonky is not an investment product, but is used for the appreciation of money, and its advantage is that it has a well-defined and predictable return. Next year, we also want to revitalize our range of mutual funds,” adds Petr Žabža.
When exactly Air Bank will launch its new investment service, it does not yet want to say. The deadline “at the turn of the year” applies, with the fact that clients could still expect it this year. The bank wants to be ready for the January New Year’s resolutions at the latest, when, according to its surveys, more and more Czechs will also decide to invest.
