Are you curious to start in the world of investments. Then this is an entry that will interest you. This is the way I started and I consider it a good way to take your first steps in the world of stock market investment.
When I started investing I did it through Brand New Day, I didn’t know much about the stock market but I knew Brand New Day since I have a pension account with them. This pension pension account invests the money in the stock market. Both accounts are similar in terms of investment instruments, but the pension account has tax benefits, what you deposit in the pension account is tax deductible and the tax authorities (belastingdienst) returns a part of what you deposit in the pension account when you make your tax return the following year.
Brand New Day
Brand New Day is a Dutch company that offers a savings, pension, children’s and normal investment accounts it is licensed as a bank and financial services provider and is supervised by the AFM, if you want to know more then read the entry What is AFM? Autoriteit financiële markten
The money you deposit in the funds is separate from Brand New Day so in the unlikely event that Brand New Day goes bankrupt the money deposited in the fund is safe. As they are also a bank, it means that all the money that is not invested is protected up to 100 thousand euros.
Investment account (Beleggingsrekening)
Brand New Day has stock and bond index funds, both are well diversified and it offers two ways of investing: Model investing (Modelbeleggen) and free investing (Vrij Beleggen). The difference is that in one You choose a model created by Brand New Day experts whereas in the free investing version you pick your own funds to create your own model. This article is about Modelbeleggen which is cheaper and the way most people start with investing.
In this mode of the investment account you can choose investment models based on your profile, from very offensive to very defensive. In a previous post I told you about the different types of investor profile.
Depending on the type of profile, the amount of stocks and bonds in which the money will be invested will vary. You can select that the portfolio rebalances itself automatically, this is a unique service that Brand New Day offers for free and happens once a year.
In the table below you can see the amount of shares and bonds that each investment portfolio has, the detail of the funds available and the exact composition of each model is at the end of the article. Brand New Day has 8 funds that invest in stocks and 6 funds that invest in bonds, both with sufficiently low commissions.
| Model | Percentage Shares | Percentage Bonds |
| Very offensive or aggressive (Zeer offensief) | 100% | 0% |
| Offensive or aggressive (Offensief) | 70% | 30% |
| Moderate (Neutral) | 50% | 50% |
| Conservative (Defensief) | 30% | 70% |
| Very conservative (Zeer defensief) | 10% | 90% |
How does it work?
There are two ways to invest, deposit manually whenever you want or a scheduled deposit where at the end of each month Brand New Day will take the money from your bank account and invest it for you within a maximum of 5 business days from your deposit. This solution is ideal for those who do not want to be worrying about remembering to transfer money to the investment account each month and having to select an ETF or fund to buy. It would be like investing in automatic mode. Set and forget.
What are the returns?
In the table below you can see the average yields given by each of the models since 2010.
| Model | Very offensive or aggressive (Zeer offensief) | Offensive or aggressive (Offensief) | Moderate (Neutral) | Conservative (Defensief) | Very conservative (Zeer defensief) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Promedio | 7.72% | 6.09% | 4.73% | 3.32% | 1.85% |
| 2010 | 6.28% | 5.64% | 5.00% | 4.37% | 3.73% |
| 2011 | -5.50% | -2.79% | -0.08% | 2.62% | 5.33% |
| 2012 | 13.05% | 11.01% | 9.98% | 6.95% | 4.92% |
| 2013 | 24.54% | 18.79% | 13.04% | 7.28% | 1.53% |
| 2014 | 8.94% | 8.93% | 8.91% | 8.90% | 8.88% |
| 2015 | 1.05% | 0.86% | 0.66% | 0.46% | 0.27% |
| 2016 | 7.26% | 6.31% | 5.35% | 4.39% | 3.44% |
| 2017 | 15.60% | 12.21% | 8.82% | 5.43% | 2.04% |
| 2018 | -9.21% | -7.19% | -5.18% | -3.16% | -1.14% |
| 2019 | 22.75% | 18.84% | 14.94% | 11.03% | 7.13% |
| 2020 | 10.61% | 8.11% | 6.83% | 5.49% | 4.08% |
| 2021 | 22.50% | 14.92% | 9.86% | 4.80% | -0.25% |
| 2022 | -15.97% | -15.77% | -15.63% | -15.49% | -15.35% |
| 2023 (until June) | 11.44% | 8.47% | 6.49% | 4.51% | 2.54% |
Costs
Nothing is free in this life so investing with them also has costs, very low compared to a traditional investment fund since it invests in index funds and also compared to a traditional bank especially if low amounts are invested, you can start investing automatically through Brand New Day from 50 euro. If you transfer the money yourself or set up your own automatic transfer, any amount is possible..
The costs they have are:
- Service costs 0.34% per year (of the total money invested)
- Fund costs 0.15-0.17% per year
In the worst case it would be costing 0.51% of the yield.
You can click on the banner below to open an account, By doing so you help maintain the blog and future articles.
What about taxes?
When you open an investment account, the money you have there falls in box 3 (savings and investments) and our friend the belastingdienst will know about it and this information will be most likely pre-loaded when you make your tax return. We all have a tax-free amount for savings and investments, that amount is 57 thousand euros per person in 2023, if you have a tax partner then it is 114 thousand euros.
What are the risks involved?
When investing there is always a chance that you lose some of the money you invest, risk is always part of investing. It is important that you only invest money that you can afford to lose. Investing for the long term (years) is one way to reduce the risk that you lose money. The longer you invest the lower the chances to lose money. As you can see in the image below if you leave your money invested for 20 years you are sure to get a positive return. You can read more about it here and also read the entry Risks of Investment.
Conclusion
If you want something that does “automatic” investing for you the investment account of Brand New Day is an ideal product. Just select an investment model and activate the programmed savings and ready. BND has very good customer service, and extended opening hours.
Currently I hold a pension account of BND and the BND investment account was the first step I took in the world of investments and I think it is a good starting point for anyone that wants to start investing in an easy way with no time and low commissions. Recently I started investing €50 a month to a moddelbeleggen account with the very offensive profile, you can see the development of the account in the post My Brand New Day account
Index Funds available in Brand New Day
In the tables below you can find the index funds available in Band New Day as well as the composition of each one of the profiles in the Modelbeleggen investment account.
| Name of fund | Composition | Annual fee |
|---|---|---|
| BND Wereld Indexfonds Hedged* | 1935 companies worldwide | 0.15% |
| BND Wereld Indexfonds Unhedged * | 1935 companies worldwideo | 0.15% |
| BND Europa Indexfonds | 529 European companies | 0.17% |
| BND Duurzaam Wereld Indexfonds | 1251 socially responsible companies from developed countries. | 0.17% |
| BND Pacific Indexfonds | 344 companies in the Pacific region. | 0.17% |
| BND Amerika Indexfonds | 676 North American companies | 0.17% |
| BND Emerging Markets Indexfonds-B | 1295 companies from emerging countries in Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia. | 0.26% |
| BND Small Cap Wereld Indexfonds-B | 3347 small-cap companies in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. | 0.24% |
| Fund name | Composition | Anual fee |
|---|---|---|
| BND Euro Staatsobligatie Indexfonds | Euro-denominated European government bonds. | 0.15% |
| BND Euro Staatsobligatie Indexfonds Lang | Long-term (20+ years) euro-denominated European government bonds | 0.15% |
| BND Euro Investment Grade Obligatie Indexfonds | Euro-denominated bonds of highly rated companies | 0.15% |
| BND Euro Staatsobligatie Indexfonds Inflatie | Inflation-linked government bonds of the most creditworthy eurozone countries. | 0.15% |
| BND Wereld Obligatie Indexfonds | Bonos de países e industrias a nivel mundial con calificaciones buenas | 0.15% |
| BND Euro Staatsobligatie Indexfonds Kort | Short-term euro-denominated government bonds (1-3 years) | 0.15% |
| Funds in the model Very offensive or aggressive (Zeer offensief) | |||
| Stocks funds | 100% | ||
| BND Wereld Indexfonds Hedged | 45.76% | ||
| BND Wereld Indexfonds Unhedged | 31.69% | ||
| BND Emerging Markets Indexfonds | 11.97% | ||
| BND Small Cap Wereld Indexfonds | 10.58% | ||
| Funds in the model Offensive or aggressive (Offensief) | |||
| Stocks funds | 70% | Bonds funds | 30% |
| BND Wereld Indexfonds Hedged | 32.03% | BND Wereld Obligatie Indexfonds | 20.76% |
| BND Wereld Indexfonds Unhedged | 22.18% | BND Euro Investment Grade Obligatie Indexfonds | 4.44% |
| BND Emerging Markets Indexfonds | 8.38% | BND Euro Staatsobligatie Indexfonds | 3.30% |
| BND Small Cap Wereld Indexfonds | 7.41% | BND Euro Staatsobligatie Indexfonds Inflatie | 1.50% |
| Funds in the model Moderate (Neutral) | |||
| Stocks funds | 50% | Bonds funds | 50% |
| BND Wereld Indexfonds Hedged | 22.88% | BND Wereld Obligatie Indexfonds | 34.60% |
| BND Wereld Indexfonds Unhedged | 15.85% | BND Euro Investment Grade Obligatie Indexfonds | 7.40% |
| BND Emerging Markets Indexfonds | 5.99% | BND Euro Staatsobligatie Indexfonds | 5.50% |
| BND Small Cap Wereld Indexfonds | 5.29% | BND Euro Staatsobligatie Indexfonds Inflatie | 2.50% |
| Funds in the model Conservative (Defensief) | |||
| Stocks funds | 30% | Bonds funds | 70% |
| BND Wereld Indexfonds Hedged | 13.73% | BND Wereld Obligatie Indexfonds | 48.44% |
| BND Wereld Indexfonds Unhedged | 9.51% | BND Euro Investment Grade Obligatie Indexfonds | 10.36% |
| BND Emerging Markets Indexfonds | 3.59% | BND Euro Staatsobligatie Indexfonds | 7.70% |
| BND Small Cap Wereld Indexfonds | 3.17% | BND Euro Staatsobligatie Indexfonds Inflatie | 3.50% |
| Funds in the model Very conservative (Zeer defensief) | |||
| Stocks funds | 10% | Bonds funds | 90% |
| BND Wereld Indexfonds Hedged | 4.58% | BND Wereld Obligatie Indexfonds | 62.28% |
| BND Wereld Indexfonds Unhedged | 3.17% | BND Euro Investment Grade Obligatie Indexfonds | 13.32% |
| BND Emerging Markets Indexfonds | 1.20% | BND Euro Staatsobligatie Indexfonds | 9.90% |
| BND Small Cap Wereld Indexfonds | 1.06% | BND Euro Staatsobligatie Indexfonds Inflatie | 4.50% |
*Hedged means that it is protected against the exchange rate, undhedged that it is not.
Additionally, besides the normal model portfolios there is the opportunity to invest in sustainable funds.
