Inyova Pillar 3a aims to enable people to invest their retirement savings simply and digitally. And in such a way that the investments correspond to your values and have a positive impact on the world. We review Inyova and talk to CEO Tillmann Lang about sustainable investing with ESG funds, greenwashing, impact investing and the Inyova 3a experience. In an exclusive Inyova interview, Tillmann tells us how Inyova 3a came about and shares details about Inyova’s impact investing approach. He also talks about his plans and gives you a very special Inyova promo code.
Inyova is a Swiss financial company that was founded in 2017 and has since become the leading impact investing platform in Europe. With Inyova, you can translate your personal values 100% digitally into a professional investment strategy with just a few clicks and invest your money sustainably. Initially, this was possible in pillar 3b with Inyova Invest. Inyova 3a has been available since the end of 2021. With this product, they are also making impact investing possible in pension provision – a first in Switzerland. Inyova currently manages over 10,000 portfolios. Reason enough to talk in detail with Tillmann Lang, founder and CEO of Inyova.
Tillmann, can you tell us a bit about yourself?
Yes, of course! First of all, thank you for your interest in Inyova. I like to describe myself as a founder, techie and activist. I really wanted to do something meaningful in my professional life that I could use to create a better world for my children. That’s why I decided to start my own company. I describe myself as an activist because I stand up loudly and publicly for issues that are important to me, such as equal rights and the fight against the climate crisis, and because I focus my professional work on sustainability issues. With Inyova, we want to maximize the positive impact we can have on the world.
Dr. Tillmann Lang is CEO of Inyova AG and had the idea to found Inyova just a few months before his son Jonathan was born. Before that, Tillmann worked at McKinsey, completed his doctorate at ETH Zurich and co-founded the Sustainability in Business Lab there.
What is Inyova and what vision do you want to achieve?
We enable ordinary people to invest their money sustainably and with real impact. Before Inyova, impact investing was at best reserved for the very wealthy. At Inyova, we are changing that. Through technology, we make impact investing accessible to everyone and offer personalized portfolios that match our investors’ values – without sacrificing returns.
More and more people want to make a contribution to a better planet. Inyova stands for “Invest in your values” and makes it easy for you to invest in the issues that are important to you.
Why did you found Inyova? How did that happen?
The company was founded just over 5 years ago. A friend told me how he had solved his father’s investment problem. His father had absolutely no desire to invest. He found it cumbersome, boring and far too complicated. My friend therefore put together a portfolio for his father consisting of companies that his father was enthusiastic about, including a piano company and a solar company. His father suddenly started to take an interest in the companies in the portfolio. The investment had become accessible, understandable and meaningful. I thought it was a great idea and thought about how we could create a portfolio like this for lots of people. Incidentally, the friend in question then became a co-founder of Inyova.
At the same time, I have been thinking a lot about what we need to do to solve the climate crisis. It became increasingly clear to me that the financial system can and must play an important role. When my co-founder told me about the portfolio for his father over dinner, I knew that I wanted to combine the two aspects. That’s why we founded Inyova.
Sustainable investing has become really trendy in recent years. Can you explain what Inyova Impact Investing is?
That’s right, sustainable investments have become a megatrend in recent years. You might think that’s a reason to be happy.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. Unfortunately, the vast majority of sustainable investments have no impact. Professor Dr. Paetzold from the University of Zurich writes : “The majority of sustainable investments have no impact on the real economy”. Most sustainable investments are so-called “ESG investments”. These exclude companies that violate certain criteria. But just because you invest in a company that offers a sustainable product does not mean you are changing the world for the better.
Inyova Impact Investing takes this a giant step further. Impact investors use their money to bring about real change in their portfolio companies. They also invest in companies that may not appear sustainable at first glance, but where the investment can trigger a positive development. This works, for example, through the use of shareholder rights.
A concrete example: In May 2022, we nominated US professor Susan Shaheen, an expert in e-mobility, for the Supervisory Board of BMW. Over 2,000 of our impact investors were able to vote for her at BMW’s Annual General Meeting and thus support the company in driving forward sustainable mobility.
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When it comes to sustainable investing, it’s easy to hear the term and accusation of “greenwashing”. What do you think? Am I not simply clearing my conscience when I invest my pillar 3a with Inyova?
Greenwashing is actually a big problem with so-called “sustainable” investments. People often think that they are finally doing the right thing with their money because their bank promises them some form of sustainability.
To avoid this, Inyova creates complete transparency. With Inyova, you invest in individual shares and can therefore see exactly which companies you are supporting at all times. So there is no room for greenwashing. And if for any reason one of the companies in your portfolio does not match your personal sustainability ideas, you can exclude it from your portfolio.
“But not everywhere that says green is really green. With funds and ETFs in particular, it is difficult to see which companies you are really investing in .”
Dr. Tillmann Lang
There are now many digital pillar 3a providers in Switzerland. What makes Inyova different – and better?
Inyova pillar 3a is the only pillar 3a where you can invest with impact. That’s why it’s also called Inyova Impact Investing.
On the other hand, you can fully customize Inyova 3a to your personal wishes and needs. Because we work on the basis of individual shares and not funds, our algorithm puts together a unique portfolio. You tell us which topics are close to your heart, such as renewable energies or vegetarian nutrition, and we put together a suitable portfolio for you. You can personalize this even further by excluding or adding individual companies.
Our investors love the fact that they can personalize their portfolio at the individual share level and own the shares directly. But don’t worry, even if you personalize your portfolio with individual stock requests, you don’t have to worry about financial management. Our algorithm and our investment team always make sure that your portfolio is risk-optimized and professionally diversified.
What are the costs for Inyova 3a?
You can open your pillar 3a with Inyova from as little as CHF 100. We charge Inyova a fee of 0.8% on the invested volume. The Inyova fee includes asset management, our impact commitment, the service, the annual tax statement and the timely payout. Since we invest in individual shares and not in funds, unlike many providers, there are no additional product costs for the funds.
What does Inyova invest my money in? Can I choose the investments myself?
Inyova invests for you in individual shares that correspond to your personal values. For example, if you tell us when you open an account that renewable energy is important to you, our algorithm will suggest a portfolio of renewable energy companies, such as Sunrun or Orsted. The investment strategy therefore depends on the themes you select.
Of course, your investment strategy always depends on your personal risk profile. Depending on how much risk you can and want to take, we will create a strategy for you with a mix of equities and bonds.
One of the coolest features of Inyova Pillar 3a is the aforementioned personalization. After our algorithm has suggested a portfolio of 30-40 stocks, you have the option to further personalize your portfolio. Of course, this is not a must, but it is one way of further customizing your Inyova portfolio. For example, you can exclude companies from your portfolio. Or you can add companies of your choice. For example, if you think Tesla is a super cool company, but the share is not yet included in your investment strategy, you can add it to your wish list. If our strict financial diversification criteria allow, we will then include the company in our investment universe and you can add it to your portfolio.
Incidentally, we use green bonds for the bond portion of the portfolio. Unlike conventional bonds, however, green bonds are only used by governments, banks or companies to finance specific projects that have a positive environmental impact.
What about reallocations?
With Inyova Pillar 3a, we work with fractional shares. This allows us to set up a broadly diversified portfolio from as little as CHF 100. We regularly check the weighting of the shares in the portfolio and rebalance in the event of new investments and major deviations to ensure diversification at all times. To this end, our investment team works hand in hand with our algorithm. This automatically checks the composition of all portfolios, and if rebalancings are necessary, these are carried out every two weeks.
Asset management is handled by our own team. This means that both people and our technology are constantly looking after your portfolio. In addition, our impact team keeps a constant eye on the companies in our investment universe. If one of them violates our sustainability criteria, we remove it from the portfolios.
You said that an Inyova 3a builds up a portfolio of individual shares. As a rule, they also pay dividends. What happens to my dividends?
Exactly, at Inyova you own the individual shares directly, which means that you also own the dividends. We always reinvest your dividends directly back into your portfolio. In this way, they contribute directly to the long-term growth and impact of your assets.
“Doing good with my money” – that sounds very good to many people. As a consequence, this entails an active investment approach. Studies show that active investments have so far been inferior to passive investments in terms of returns over the long term. What do you think?
At Inyova, we pursue a very long-term investment approach. This means that we buy shares according to the chosen impact themes of our investors and hold them over a long time horizon. With this strategy, we aim to achieve a positive return for our investors in the long term. That is why we do not engage in active market timing. Nevertheless, we constantly review the existing companies in our investment universe for sustainability and financial criteria and remove companies from the portfolios that no longer meet our strict requirements. At the same time, we regularly add new, innovative companies to our investment universe, which are then also included in the portfolios.
What does a typical portfolio look like?
There is no “typical portfolio” at Inyova. Each portfolio is customized to the impact themes and risk profile of our investors. Most portfolios contain 35-40 stocks. Many have shares in companies such as Orsted, Beyond Meat, First Solar Inc and Vestas Wind Systems – this is not an investment recommendation 😉
Does Inyova offer pillar 3a savings plans? Can I invest money in pillar 3a every month with a standing order?
Yes, of course. You can easily set up a savings plan via a standing order. Of course, this costs you nothing extra and the savings plan is also completely flexible. If you don’t want to pay anything in for a month, that’s no problem at all, you’re not committing to anything with the savings plan.
Yova was founded in 2017 and changed its name to Inyova in 2021. Another milestone was certainly the crowdinvesting in April 2022. Can you tell us who is now financially behind Inyova?
With Inyova, we want to ensure that ordinary people have a say in large companies and can exercise their voting rights. We wanted to apply this principle to our company too. With our crowd investing, we gave everyone the opportunity to become a part owner of Inyova and invest in a startup.
All crowd investors together are now the largest shareholder group after the founders of Inyova. And we still have a few individual investors who, like us, are convinced that Inyova is making an important contribution to solving the climate crisis. For example, Myke Naef, founder of Doodle, Nicole Herzog, Chairwoman of Sherpany and Pascal Grieder, CEO of Salt Mobile. Shortly before our crowd investing, the impact fund AENU also invested in Inyova. AENU focuses its investments on companies that have a real positive impact and I am very proud that Inyova is now one of them.
How secure is my pillar 3a with Inyova? After all, it’s about retirement provision.
We work with the Liberty 3a Pension Foundation for our pillar 3a to guarantee that your retirement provision with Inyova is secure. Liberty is an established partner. It manages over CHF 3.4 billion for more than 30,000 people.
So if Inyova should go bankrupt, which of course we don’t expect, your money is still safe with Liberty because they hold your custody account. We at Inyova take care of putting together the investments.
Who did you make the Inyova pillar 3a for? Which people use your offer?
Inyova 3a is made for everyone who wants to do something good with their money and, above all, with their retirement provision. Our customers are primarily people for whom sustainability in their private lives is important and who also want a sustainable option for their money – without greenwashing.
Our solution is also suitable for people who are not very familiar with finance. In fact, most of our investors are investing for the first time.
The Inyova 3a hasn’t been on the market that long. How many customers do you have?
We launched Inyova pillar 3a at the end of 2021. Most people take care of their pillar 3a in November or December. That’s why we were surprised that people also signed up for our 3a throughout the year. We currently manage over 10,000 portfolios at Inyova.
What are your plans for 2023?
We want to further improve our offering. Many people have now realized how important sustainability is for financial products too. More and more people want to invest with real impact and not just with a good feeling. That’s why we want to encourage many more portfolio companies to improve their sustainability impact. This is the only way we can create a better world.
Finally: I believe you brought our readers an Inyova friend code as a gift?
Yes, exactly. Regardless of whether you open an Inyova 3a or invest with Inyova outside of pillar 3a: with the friend code SMOLIO you pay no fees on your assets for 1 year. Regardless of whether you start with CHF 100 or invest the maximum pillar 3a amount straight away. The Inyova savings code is already worth around 50 francs in the first year.
Even better: if you invite friends to join us, we’ll plant two trees for everyone who creates a free strategy. And if your friend decides to invest, you’ll both receive CHF 5 per month for 12 months.
Simply enter the promo code SMOLIO when opening your account in your Inyova dashboard under “Promotions”.
Summary Inyova 3a experiences
With Inyova Pillar 3a, you can invest money in companies that align with your values. What we like about the Inyova review is that the guys and gals make sure your investments are diversified, efficient and in line with your values. You can think of it as a professional asset manager who standardizes your individual strategy and implements it according to the findings of modern portfolio theory. We have never seen a solution like this before.
Since we’re talking about your pillar 3a pension provision here, it has to be secure. That’s why your money is deposited with the Liberty Pension Foundation, which has been in the business for a long time. To this end, Inyova has chosen a structure that we are already familiar with from other digital providers of pillar 3a solutions that work with a bank pension foundation. In our view, there is nothing wrong with this, as it allows both partners to concentrate on their core competencies.
In the past, returns of between 6 – 7% per year could be achieved over longer periods (cf. for example, the long-term study by Pictet for the Swiss market). You can achieve such returns with well-diversified, efficient portfolios of equities and bonds. With 35-40 stocks you can already achieve a pretty good diversification and if Inyova delivers its core competence well, this should also result in a normal market return (before costs). So if it is important to you that your money not only yields maximum returns but also does good, Inyova Pillar 3a can offer you an interesting solution at very manageable costs. Perhaps this is also worth considering for you. After all, “there’s no planet B”.
Open Inyova Pillar 3a
Enter promo code SMOLIO in your Inyova dashboard under “Promotions” when you open your Pillar 3a or Inyova Invest account and before you deposit money. Thanks to the Inyova Friends Code you will not pay any fees for 12 months.
Notice
Wir sind dir dankbar, wenn du bei einer Kontoeröffnung unseren Code nutzt. Wir erhalten dann eine kleine Vergütung. Für dich wird es dadurch nicht teurer und wir können die Kosten für den Betrieb der Plattform decken. Wir freuen uns auch, wenn du uns einen Kaffee spendierst ☕️.
Last update: 26.10.2024 20:35
