Tinkoff launches first micro-investing service in Russia with Investment Box

Banking
08.06.2020 03:12 pm

Tinkoff announces the launch of Investment Box, Russia’s first service for micro-investing offered by a bank. With Investment Box, Tinkoff customers will be able to regularly save small amounts of money when making everyday purchases with debit cards. These savings will be automatically invested in Tinkoff’s Permanent Portfolio exchange-traded funds.

Tinkoff’s Investment Box is a unique brokerage account that combines the simplicity of a savings account with the profitability of an ETF. This new service is integrated into the Tinkoff ecosystem, enabling customers to start saving and making small investments at once without changing their normal patterns of behaviour.

How it works

The Investment Box is integrated into the Tinkoff mobile app. It allows users to save small amounts on their purchases with the Tinkoff Black debit card or the Tinkoff Black Metal premium card. Customers can choose their savings amount manually or automatically.

There are four options for automatic top-ups: cashback, interest on account balance, rounding up everyday transactions, and setting a custom amount for top-ups.

Rounding up transactions. The service will round up purchases to the nearest 10, 50 or 100 roubles and transfer the difference to the ’box’. For example, a purchase of RUB 105 can be rounded up to RUB 110/150/200, to increase the Investment Box balance by RUB 5/45/95. The rounding up option allows customers to see a forecast of their savings for the year.
Cashback. All cashback bonuses earned on Tinkoff Black debit card transactions will be credited to the Investment Box automatically. They will be credited in the amount of 1% for daily shopping transactions and up to 15% for specific spending categories, chosen by each customer on a monthly basis.
Interest on account balance. Money accrued on Tinkoff Black account balances for the settlement period will be credited to the Investment Box automatically (4%);
Regular autopay. You can regularly top up the Investment Box with a predefined amount each month, each week, or a chosen top-up date or day of the week.

To save money faster, you can select more than one option or choose to implement the above four options at once.

Portfolio Strategy exchange-traded mutual funds (ETMFs) include stocks, corporate and government bonds in various currencies, as well as gold (with each asset class comprising 25% of the total allocation). The Permanent Portfolio Strategy is instrumental in saving and making money during in times of crisis and in times of stability. The average historic return for this fund strategy stands at 14% in rouble terms, 7% in US dollars and 6% in euros.

Investment Box features:

All transactions in the mobile app. Customers do not have to visit bank branches, management company offices, other websites, or apps. The Investment Box is an optional add-on for Tinkoff Black and Tinkoff Black Metal in the main Tinkoff mobile app.
Multi-currency support. Customers can open as many as three Investment Boxes denominated in different currencies – Russian roubles, US dollars, and euros – and top up those boxes automatically in one of the above currencies.

No brokerage or depositary fees. The fund’s costs (0.99% of the average annual asset value) are included in the investment unit value on the exchange and are not charged back to the customer. Tinkoff will only charge a fee (RUB 1.00) for closing the account. However, customers will still be liable for the earnings tax, so the government will typically deduct an annual 13% tax on funds withdrawn from Investment Box.

Ruslan Muchipov, CEO of Tinkoff Capital:

“Many people are keen to start investing, but they typically face two types of hurdles, according to our surveys. They do not know where to begin and what company to turn to with their money. To resolve this, people need to gain a deeper understanding of finance and find a specialized service to help them invest. Micro investing addresses these issues and has been gaining popularity abroad with such services as Stash and Acorns, which serve some five million clients each.

To address this in Russia, we came up with Investment Box, our new tool for easily tackling these challenges. Our customers won’t need to download additional applications, fill in countless documents, add more cards or open new online accounts. The Tinkoff mobile app allows users to set up Investment Box with just a couple of clicks and begin investing automatically. After getting started, customers can earn investment income by simply buying their morning coffee or purchasing food for dinner at a supermarket.

The Investment Box gives customers an opportunity to save tens of thousands of roubles each year. We estimate the number of Investment Box users will exceed 300,000 by the end of 2020, growing to more than 1 million active users in 2021.”

How to enable the service

Investment Box is available to holders of Tinkoff Black debit cards and Tinkoff Black Metal premium debit cards. To start using this tool, customers need to launch their Tinkoff mobile app, select “Apply for new product” and then “Apply for Investment Box”. They will then receive an SMS to confirm the account has been opened.

Investment Box will be displayed on the home screen of the Tinkoff mobile app among other accounts. Customers can open the Investment Box screen to check their account balances and transactions, set up a top-up option (automatic or manual), select or switch their automatic top-up currency, withdraw money, or download legal documents (e.g. daily depositary report on assets flow).

For more details about Tinkoff’s Investment Box visit Tinkoff Help. The Investment Box is available on iOS (one will have to upgrade the Tinkoff app to version 5.4) and will be accessible from Android devices by the end of June.