FNB makes shares more accessible to the public
FNB today takes wealth-creation to the man on the street by launching a Share Investing platform to assist people investing in the stock market.
And with share prices at their lowest levels in many years, the stock market is offering great buying opportunities - especially for long-term investors - to build a strong wealth portfolio.
FNB’s strategic rationale for introducing its Share Investing vehicle is to offer its customer base access to the equity markets. Shares are one of the best asset classes, especially for long-term investors
The FNB Share Investing offering is simple and affordable, and seeks to address some of the access barriers associated with products of this nature. These include high fees, need for large amounts to open accounts and trade economically, lack of investor education and the inability by those less sophisticated in equity markets to select shares. To help address these, FNB introduces two Share Investing products:
Share Builder
Targeted at the man on the street, Share Builder allows investors to choose from 20 pre-selected “blue chip” shares as well as two exchange traded funds listed on the JSE Limited (JSE).
Share Builder takes away the nervousness and risk when selecting shares by offering a simplified choice of shares, helping the new investor to get started. “The limited selection of the shares means that the complex task of choosing which share to buy is solved for the investor,” says Robert Keip, FNB’s CEO for Savings and Investment Products.
Share Builder is the most cost-effective online share trading platform in the market. It requires a minimum amount of R100 to open, with a monthly fee of R17 incl VAT.
Share Builder’s transaction fee per trade is an all in cost of 2% of the trade value, with a minimum of R50 per trade excluding VAT. No other costs apply. All Share Builder orders are traded at the end of every day, hence saving on transaction fees for customers.
Share Investor
Share Investor is more likely to find favour with the more experienced investor, allowing one to deal in all shares listed on the JSE. With Share Investor, clients can invest on the JSE using real-time trading on fast, fully integrated systems. The minimum account balance is R200, and it attracts a monthly fee of R45. Transaction per trade costs 0,6% of trade value with minimum of R80 per trade plus standard JSE and STRATE charges.
For both Share Builder and Share Investor, the customer’s share portfolios are located on the FNB Online Banking platform to facilitate transactional ability between accounts and allow a single view of all accounts held by the bank. “Locating the share offering on FNB’s Online Banking brings with it security, convenience, easy transacting and tracking as current values of the portfolio are displayed every time you log onto internet banking. ” says Keip. In addition, your share portfolio can be accessed via your mobile phone.
He says today’s launch of FNB Share Investing complements the bank’s savings and investment portfolio, which includes R100 entry level investment products (Simply Save, 32 Interest Plus, Flexi Fixed Deposits) and R10 000 entry level products such as the Restart Fixed Deposit. For investors who want managed equity investments, FNB offers its R40 per month FNB Growth Fund.
“We do believe that, with FNB Share Investing, we have come up with an innovative, unique, simpler, and cheaper wealth creation vehicle that is accessible to everyone. Our strong focus on opening up the stock market to the man on the street will afford small investors an opportunity to invest in asset classes that will help them build wealth over long-term, and simultaneously boost SA’s household savings levels,” says Keip.
To assist customers wanting to invest in shares, FNB has put together an online Education Centre, (www.fnb.co.za/shareinvesting) which provides information on share investing, how to build a winning portfolio, a financial jargon buster and helpful information to help a customer decipher the world of investing.
FNB Internet customers can open their accounts immediately by logging into their Internet Banking and completing the steps displayed on the Shares tab. The offer is also open to non-FNB customers and interested investors can open an account at any FNB Branch.
For more information you can call Share Investing on 0860 742 737, e-mail us at [email protected] or go to www.fnb.co.za/shareinvesting for more information.
