Your most frequently asked questions

When you deposit funds, they are sent to the 'Finax Klienti' account held at Tatra banka. Our clients' funds are kept separate from our corporate funds, which is strictly controlled by the National Bank of Slovakia. Subsequently, your money is transferred to foreign managers who execute the purchase of securities (ETFs) on the stock exchange. Once you sign in to your Finax account, you will have a continuous overview of your account's value.

Yes, Finax is regulated by the National Bank of Slovakia (NBS). You can find the authorization from the NBS here.

Finax participates in the deposit protection system through the Investment Guarantee Fund. Your assets are protected up to 50,000 euros. As a securities dealer, we follow very strict rules when managing your assets and we keep your assets strictly separate from our company’s assets. You can find more information on the page www.garancnyfond.sk.

In the upper right corner, click on "Login". Below, you will find a link labelled "Forgotten password?". Please follow the instructions provided.

The custody of our securities is handled by KBC Bank, a Belgian bank which is one of the European leaders in the field of asset custody. KBC owns, for example, ČSOB in the Czech Republic and Slovakia or K&H Bank in Hungary.

Finax invests your funds in a tax-smart way, aiming to make the most of the tax advantages available under the applicable legislation in your country of residence. Whether your returns can be exempt from tax depends on your country of residence and on meeting the relevant legal conditions – this includes following the correct procedure when withdrawing money or ending your investment. We will inform you about this.

This applies depending on your country of tax residence. If you pay tax in another country, please check the possible tax aspects of your investment in that specific country.

When managing your assets, we use a combination of tax advantages available under the applicable legislation. Our portfolios are made up solely of ETF funds, which may benefit from favourable tax treatment once the relevant legal conditions are met. We also adapt purchases and sales during rebalancing to this.

Tax treatment depends on your country of tax residence. If you pay tax in another country, please check the possible tax aspects of your investment in that specific country.

Returns from standard mutual funds are often taxed when they are sold, which can reduce your net profit compared with investing in ETFs.

Example: You invest 10,000 euros in mutual funds and another 10,000 euros in ETFs traded on the stock exchange. Assume both investments grow by 8% p.a. over the next 10 years, so each is worth 21,600 euros at the end – a profit of 11,600 euros. Depending on the tax treatment applicable in your country of residence, the mutual fund gain may be reduced by tax, whereas ETFs may benefit from more favourable tax treatment once the relevant conditions are met.

Tax treatment depends on your country of tax residence. If you pay tax in another country, please check the possible tax aspects of your investment in that specific country.

Finax charges an annual fee of 1% + VAT on the value of assets under management (the total value of assets, i.e., securities and cash). The fee is charged monthly.

We also offer various discounts on the portfolio management fee. For instance, if you refer a friend who opens an account, we will manage 1,000 euros of your savings at no charge.

Check the ongoing promotions to obtain even higher discounts.

Here's an example: You have invested 20,000 euros and referred a friend who invested 10,000 euros. Both you and your friend have a discount of 1,000 euros. Assuming the month in question has 30 days and the value of your account remains unchanged over time, the monthly fee would be calculated as follows:
(20,000 - 1,000) * 0.0123 * (30/365) = 19.21 euros

The portfolio management fee is calculated on a continuous monthly basis. Each day, we calculate a charge based on 1/365 (or 1/366 during a leap year) of the annual fee, taking into account the value of your account on that particular day. At the end of the month, we sum up the daily charges and apply them to your account.

Example: Let's say you have invested 20,000 euros. Assuming the month has 30 days and your account's value changed over time as follows: the first 15 days it was 20,000, the next 5 days it was 20,500, and the last 10 days it was 20,300.

20,000 * 0.012 * 15/365 + 20,500 * 0.012 * 5/365 + 20,300 * 0.012 * 10/365 = 19.91 euros.

You don’t pay any fees if you decide to close your account.

Yes, you can combine our discounts. However, when registering through a special link (a friend’s invitation, an affiliate link, or another special promotion), only one discount can be used. This means that you may even end up having your entire account managed completely free of charge.

Finax does not charge a fee for investment advice, but you may be charged a fee by the distributing financial agent. The financial agent's fee for providing investment advice may be deducted from your investment account held with Finax.

The maximum investment advisory fee is 4% of the deposit value. The fee can be paid upfront from the target total deposit amount (express), gradually from the target amount (accelerated), or on an ongoing basis from each deposit (standard).

When investment advice is provided by a financial agent, they should, as much as possible, suggest the most suitable product for you based on your circumstances from the various financial products available.

a) you have allowed access to the camera in the pop-up window / on your mobile phone by pressing "Allow" (the functionality may slightly differ among different browsers and smartphones),
b) you are completing the registration on a screen that has a camera (if you are using multiple screens, drag the browser window to the screen with a camera),
c) the camera is not covered for security reasons,
d) the use of the camera is allowed in your browser settings. Here is a guide on how to find the browser settings for each browser: Chrome, Firefox, Safari.

a) you are uploading the correct document type you selected from the available identity documents,
b) you positioned the document so that all its edges fit inside the inner frame and it is not skewed,
c) you are not covering any part of the text or photo on the document with your fingers,
d) the uploaded image is sharp enough,
e) there is no window or overly bright background behind the document while taking the photo.

a) your photo or the uploaded image is sharp enough,
b) your photo matches the photo on your identity card well enough,
c) your face is not covered, you are not wearing sunglasses and there are no other people next to you,
d) when taking the photo, there is no window or overly bright background behind you.

a) you are not wearing a head covering or glasses,
b) if you are wearing glasses in the photo on your identity document, please try to complete the verification both with and without glasses,
c) during the live verification, you do not move your face and you follow the red dot only with your eyes.

To deposit money into your account, you should transfer funds from your bank account held in a European bank under your name. Generally, funds will be credited to your account on the next business day. Finax executes portfolio trades on a weekly basis.

The minimum deposit for a one-time investment is 10 euros.
The minimum deposit for regular monthly investments is 10 euros.

To ensure prompt crediting of your deposit to your account, please use the correct variable symbol. The payment instructions are as follows:

If you have cash, we recommend first depositing it into your bank account and then transferring the funds to us. This way, you avoid any suspicion of money laundering.

Normally, your deposit will be processed on the next business day after it is received. We execute purchases on stock exchanges every week, typically on Tuesdays. However, we reserve the right to adjust the trading day if it coincides with a holiday in Slovakia, Germany, or other countries where we operate. Deposits that are processed by the previous Friday will be invested.

Example: If you initiate a transfer order from your bank on Wednesday, the funds will be in our collective account on Thursday, and you will be able to see the transaction online in your account on Friday. Investments are usually carried out the following Tuesday, and you will be able to see them in your account on Wednesday.

The minimum deposit for a one-time investment is 10 euros.
The minimum deposit for regular monthly investments is 10 euros.

At the moment, we accept bank transfers as the form of deposit. Clients who already own securities traded on European stock exchanges can also transfer these securities to us. If this applies to you, please contact our client support at [email protected] for simple instructions. We are working on enabling card payments in the future. Cash deposits are accepted only exceptionally and only if you can prove the origin of the funds.

Finax will not penalise you in any way if you stop depositing money regularly, whether permanently or for a short time. However, you may not reach your target amount.

You can send amounts over 1,000 euros at any time. Amounts up to 1,000 euros are best sent monthly in the same amount. If you decide differently, we will not penalise you.

Both sales and purchases are executed on the same day. Withdrawal instructions received by 12 PM on the working day preceding the trading day (usually a Monday) will be processed and executed during that week. It then takes 2 working days for the stock exchange to transfer the proceeds to our account, which is held for these purposes with a foreign manager. Therefore, selling the investment and sending the funds to your account may take 3-10 days.

We send the money to the current account held in your name from which you sent us the funds. If you would like the funds to be sent to another account, it is necessary to verify the withdrawal form with a notary.

Finax was established by its two founders, Juraj Hrbatý and Radoslav Kasík. They worked together to develop the entire concept and currently make strategic decisions and shape the company's future direction. Finax is owned by one of its founders, Juraj Hrbatý. In August 2019, Finax received an investment from Growws Sicav, a.s., a Slovak-owned venture fund. As a result, we are a Slovak company with Slovak management and owners, and we pay taxes in Slovakia.

We have made every effort to enable you to invest without the need to fit personal meetings into your schedule. However, we understand that your deposited savings represent a significant amount of your hard work. If you insist on meeting us in person, we are more than open to arranging a meeting. Please schedule it with us by phone, and we will be happy to introduce you more closely to the company and its people, hopefully convincing you that you can trust our team with your savings.

Our capital amounts to 858,322 euros. Similar to banking, brokers must maintain sufficient resources to cover the risks associated with their business operations. This is one of the fundamental parameters monitored by the National Bank of Slovakia.

To find your account number, log in to Finax, where you will see all your accounts. Click on the chosen account to open the account details. One of the items is the account number.

Finax offers the following unique solutions:

• A transparent model of investing in specific ETFs – a broad equity basket and a conservative bond portfolio.
• Minimal portfolio management fees. No fees for buying/selling, performance, rebalancing, and similar services.
• We aim to maximise your returns. We don’t know of any product that would bring better long-term results.
• Tax-smart approach to your returns.
• Automated rebalancing.
• Option to buy fractional shares – we can purchase less than one ETF unit for you, so you can build a quality, diversified portfolio even with a minimum deposit.
• A simple, user-friendly environment.

Saving in a bank account usually guarantees that your balance will not fall in nominal terms, so the returns are very low and typically do not keep up with inflation. Over time, your savings lose purchasing power. In 10 years, you will be able to buy less than today, because prices in shops will be higher. On the other hand, an account with Finax offers the potential for higher returns. Its value may temporarily fall, but you can adjust the level of risk to suit you, and over the long term it is very likely that you will earn several times more than on a bank savings account.

Yes, you can. Please call our customer support and we will gladly guide you through the process.

Upon finishing the registration, you click on the “plus” button in the Coach section and hit “Add a bank account”. Follow the instructions, and after a few minutes, your last payments will appear.
Your consent with loading the data will be valid for a 180 days. It will then be necessary to renew it. Don’t worry, it will only take a few seconds.

Upon connecting your bank, it may take a few minutes for the transactions to appear in Coach. Registering the payments from the current day may take more than 24 hours to complete. If the payment has not appeared yet for a longer period of time, it is most likely a failure from the side of your bank.

If your payment has not been assigned a category, you may do so yourself, manually. If the payment recurs, e.g. grocery shopping at your local grocery store, you may set up a rule, for it to always appear in that category. All you need to do is to write the word base from the payment’s description, save it and you won’t have to repeat yourself ever again. The already set-up rules can be changed in the settings section.

For example, if you make a transfer between your accounts, Coach will categorize this transaction as both an expense on one account and as an income on the other, which may distort your financial analysis. There's two ways to change this. Either you set up a rule for all internal transactions - you tap the "More" button in the main lower menu and you turn off "Include internal transactions" in the "Bank transfer" section. The second option is to change the settings for just one particular transfer - in the payment's detail, you turn off the "Include in the analysis".

If you withdraw cash, and you use it for one transaction, you just need to assign one category to the entire expense. If you use the cash for more transactions, you may click on Split the payment and assign two or more categories.
If you are not sure what to do with the withdrawn cash yet, label the payment as “ATM withdrawal” and the Coach will automatically increase the cash in your digital wallet by that amount. Don’t forget to add the cash payments by the + sign afterwards.

Currently the directive (PSD2) doesn’t allow us to access the information on credit card payments or any other credit products for that matter (mortgage, consumer credit etc.). However, this may change with the new directive (PSD3).
For now, it would be the best to create a separate cash account for your credit card, and write down the expenses manually, just like with cash payments.

Client data safety is our top priority. The data transfer from your bank to Finax is handled through the https protocol and through so called your bank’s AISP certificate verification. The data storage is located on our own servers.
The access to your data is generated by your bank, upon the token’s expiration or manual Data processing consent withdrawal, we are unable to further load new transactions.
Payment account data and transaction history is loaded from your bank. However, it’s impossible to use the Coach for the payment initialization or changing your bank account settings. The data flow is one-way only, from your bank to Finax.
Personal data access is strictly limited to an absolutely necessary amount of people, and we work primarily with their anonymized version.
We can’t see or save your internet banking login credentials when connecting your bank accounts. In the background, you login directly through your bank, and we obtain an authorization token with a limited validity.

Your portfolio consists of ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) that follow the performance of the world’s largest economies. Depending on your chosen risk level, you will hold up to 6 equity ETFs and up to 4 bond ETFs that together represent about 80% of the global economy. Depending on their focus, these ETFs track the development of:

1. US stocks of large companies
2. US stocks of medium-sized companies
3. US stocks of small companies
4. European large and mid-sized companies
5. European small companies
6. Stocks of companies from emerging countries
7. Global government bonds
8. European corporate bonds
9. European high-yield bonds
10. Government bonds of emerging countries

An ETF (Exchange Traded Fund) is a basket of stocks or bonds that tracks the performance of an index, commodity, or another basket of assets, similar to a mutual fund, but it is traded on a stock exchange. One of its main advantages is the tax aspect – under certain conditions, depending on your country of residence, gains from ETFs may be tax-advantaged once you hold them for longer than a year. Their market price closely follows the movement of indices such as the Dow Jones, Nasdaq, Euro Stoxx 600, and others. Finax uses ETFs as part of both the equity and bond components of your portfolio.

Your portfolio consists of two components: stocks (which are more risky) and bonds (which are more conservative). Your returns are significantly influenced by the allocation between these components. In general, the rule of thumb is that the higher the stock component (and thus the risk), the higher the potential return. Conversely, a higher bond component (and lower risk) will result in a more conservative return. Over the long term, the optimal risk-return ratio is typically achieved by investing in a portfolio with an 80% stock component.

If you are not yet a client, click on "Let's Start." After assessing of your risk profile, we'll tell you what the final value of your investment is likely to be, as well as the expected result in a pessimistic and an optimistic scenario.

Over time, the value of your investment will change, with some portfolio components growing or declining more than others. This can lead to a deviation from the ideal (target) composition of your portfolio. To maintain the desired risk and return ratio, portfolio rebalancing is performed. This involves selling assets that are overweighted and purchasing assets that are underweighted. Long-term data suggests that regularly rebalancing your portfolio can increase its return by 0.35% to 0.5% per year compared to a non-rebalanced portfolio. Over a 20-year horizon, this can gradually create a 40% difference in final return on the original deposit.

The reason behind this is simple. When stocks experience significant growth and their proportion in the portfolio increases, they are sold at higher prices. Conversely, underperforming bonds are purchased, as their prices have not risen as much and are relatively cheaper compared to stocks. Similarly, during a declining stock market, cheap stocks are purchased, while expensive bonds are sold.

We rebalance your portfolio based on its drift, which measures the deviation from the ideal composition. If the deviation reaches a significant level, we initiate the rebalancing process. However, we also take taxes into consideration.

Example to illustrate: Imagine if the ideal proportion of US large companies in the portfolio is 25%. We will aim to rebalance the portfolio if this component exceeds 27.5% or falls below 22.5%, while also considering tax implications.

When it comes to investments, you often hear phrases like "The value of the investment may go down as well as rise over time" or "Past performance is not indicative of future results." These phrases are frequently repeated, but investors sometimes overlook their meaning.

At Finax, we want to ensure that you understand the concept of risk.

Savings held in a bank are guaranteed by the government up to 100,000 euros. This means that even if the bank goes bankrupt, you can be confident that you will recover your funds.

However, this guarantee does not apply to investments in stocks or bonds. No one can guarantee returns on investments. The value of companies listed on the stock market can rise or fall. If a company performs poorly, its stock price may decline, whereas a well-performing company's stock price will increase. The same applies to index funds, but on a broader scale. When the overall economy prospers, indexes rise, and vice versa. Additionally, governments may face challenges in repaying their debt. Therefore, investing is risky.

Why then do people invest? Because over the long term, investing offers the potential for higher wealth appreciation compared to passive savings in a bank account. The general principle is that higher-risk investments have the potential for higher returns. If an individual can tolerate the risk of potential losses, their investment will likely reward them with higher expected returns.

At Finax, we believe that by carefully selecting a widely diversified portfolio and appropriately balancing the ratio of stocks and bonds based on the client's investment needs, we can maximize returns while minimizing risk.

If past returns were a reliable indicator of future performance, investing would be incredibly simple. However, companies that performed well in the past may not necessarily continue to do so in the present or future. At Finax, we invest in the world's largest companies, aiming to be a part of this important club. While we base our expected returns on a detailed study of historical data, we recognize that it is not a foolproof predictor of future performance.

Investment literature and experts often emphasize that stocks are a risky investment. This is because stock returns can be highly volatile, with significant price fluctuations. Therefore, individuals with a short-term investment horizon should generally avoid investing in stocks.

However, stocks can be advantageous for long-term investors. For individuals with a short-term horizon, Finax offers more conservative portfolios that align with their investment goals and time frame.

Most of our portfolios are denominated in euros. This means that if you deposit funds in a currency other than the euro, we will first convert the amount into euros before purchasing ETFs on the stock exchange. The only exceptions are the products Złoty Portfolio and Złoty Bond Portfolio, which are denominated in Polish zloty, and Elite client Brokerage accounts, which can be held in US dollars.

You can choose the currency in which you'd like us to display your investment returns. If you choose a display currency that differs from the denomination of your portfolio, we will first convert the portfolio's value into the display currency using ECB exchange rates, and then calculate the return based on the converted amount.