If you want to have your own strategy with a new investment plan, you can easily update your portfolio strategy. You can select a different level of risk or preference for sustainability and get a new model portfolio. You can also freely select investment funds from the range of investment funds available and build your own investment plan.   Follow these steps to change strategy: Log in to advinans.se. Go to "Savings" and then choose the portfolio. Select "Strategy" in order to change your portfolio strategy.

If you don't want to use Advinans' fund proposals for your portfolio, you can select your own funds.  Follow these steps: Log in to advinans.se. Go to "Savings". Go to the portfolio. Select the "Strategy" tab.  To update your portfolio's funds, go through the steps with financial profile, risk and sustainability preferences.  Here you can then choose whether you want to go through with Advinans' fund proposals or choose funds yourself through your own portfolio strategy.  Add and adjust fund holdings, save new strategy and sign with BankID your new choice.

The saving period is what should have the greatest impact on the risk-taking in your savings. Simply explained; if you have a long savings period, Advinans will give you a high proportion of equity funds (risk) that will subsequently decrease in favour of fixed-income funds as you approach your savings target. If you have a short savings horizon, it means a high percentage of fixed-income funds from the start.

Everyone has different sustainability preferences when it comes to investments. Advinans wants to help you make the right choice given your preferences and we have therefore divided the savings into two different approaches: save broadly or save sustainably. Advinans has also secured the best investment funds in each category.   Save broadly To save broadly means that Advinans, with no restrictions, puts together the best possible investment plan based on your savings targets. This means you get exposure to the full market and that it is the most cost-effective option.   Save sustainably If you save sustainably you will be exposure to the full market excluding specific sectors as per below. The fees are somewhat higher if you save sustainably, but with sustainability growing strongly in the fund industry the fee gap is negligible.  For sustainable funds Advinans follow the negative screening guidelines of United Nations’ Principles for Responsible Investment. The principles are based on negative screening criteria where certain sectors are excluded for the funds to invest in. In the table below you find the sectors fund companies can not invest in according to the UN Principles. Category Activity Rule E Extraction of oil, coal, and gas Fund excludes companies involved in the extraction of oil, coal, and gas E Fossil fuels energy generation Fund excludes companies that generate energy coming from fossil fuels S Controversial weapons Fund excludes companies with ties to nuclear weapons, cluster bombs, landmines, chemical and biological weapons S Civilian firearms Fund excludes companies deriving 5% or more revenue from distribution of firearms and small arms S Tobacco Fund excludes companies classified as producers of tobacco or deriving 5% or more aggregate revenue from distribution of tobacco or tobacco-related products S Alcohol Fund excludes companies deriving 5% or more revenue from alcohol S Gambling Fund excludes companies deriving 5% or more revenue from gambling S Pornography Fund excludes companies deriving 5% or more revenue from pornography G International norms and conventions Fund excludes companies that are verifiably breaching international norms and conventions

Traditional management is the most common form of savings for retirement and is the default for many employers due to its simplicity as well as elements of guarantee. Simply put, it means that the insurance company takes care of all the management for you the customer in something that can be likened to a large investment fund. You are not able to make any changes and there are often special conditions associated with the savings. Traditional management is generally an acceptable way to save if you do not have a great interest in savings and investments. Unit-linked insurance with incorrect risk and high fund fees is currently a common phenomenon and hurts many investors. The reason is that few people have the knowledge required to manage their own investment fund savings while advisors in banks and insurance companies often have incentives to sell mediocre products at high prices. For traditional life insurance, the insurance company takes care of all management, which is a good starting point. The problem with traditional life insurance is that the risk is not tailored to you and your life cycle. Traditional life insurance management generally offers constant medium-risk management, which means that young people take too little risk and retired people too much – the result is low returns for the young and potentially undesirable fluctuations for the retired. Guarantees in a traditional insurance are also of limited value. Advinans’ view is that unit-linked insurance is the best solution but it requires that the customers optimise their savings based on their life cycle and preferred risk – and ensure the right exposure at low fees.  Advinans’ automatic portfolio management for ISK and occupational pension as well as Advinans’ pension advisory service are a good basis for successful investment fund savings. Read more about Advinans’ views on traditional life insurance management in Traditional life insurance or unit-linked insurance.

A foreign exchange fee for trading in foreign investment funds is common for many investment fund distributors in the market. Each time you buy or sell a fund that is listed in a currency other than Swedish kronor, a foreign exchange takes place at the distributor’s exchange rate which often includes a mark-up. If you trade in a foreign fund directly in Swedish kronor, the investment fund company has handled the foreign exchange itself, probably at a most lower exchange rate. Advinans does not want the currency in which the investment fund is traded to make any difference to you as a customer. With Advinans, any foreign exchange will be done via Allfunds to an institutional exchange rate for various currencies from Danske Bank. Neither Advinans nor Allfunds adds any mark-up to this exchange rate.

Advinans offers a long-term savings platform, not a trading platform and for that purpose we believe that a well-diversified investment fund portfolio is the most appropriate form of savings for the absolute majority of our customers. For experienced investors who want to invest directly in shares, Advinans recommends online brokers. If you are going to invest directly in shares, you should spend plenty of time on identifying long-term attractive companies that you understand and know something about and you also need to have a long investment horizon. Unfortunately, many people trade in companies they do not understand, which is good for the brokers but not for the customers. 

The short answer is because we can offer the same or better market exposures with investment funds for a lower overall cost for our customers. An ETF or an exchange-traded fund is similar to an investment fund but it is not traded directly via the stock exchange. This is the only difference between investment funds and ETFs. Advinans’ objective is to minimise the cost based on the market exposure we are seeking for our customers and currently we are better able to do so through investment funds.   In more detail: Advinans’ investment fund fees are in line with, or are lower than the equivalent market exposures through ETFs. Several important exposures we are seeking are not available via ETFs (primarily on the fixed income side). In addition to the cost of an ETF you also must take into account ”the spread”, i.e. the difference between the buying and selling rate that is paid by the customer. We believe that it is easier and more transparent that all customers in the event of withdrawals/payouts get the final value of the fund according to the investment fund companies rather than us buying ETF during the day with an average price that may deviate greatly from the closing rate. Advinans saves on costs for trade and storage, which enable us to keep our management costs low for our customers.

Advinans’ basic view is that very few fund managers over long periods of time beat their benchmark index – the financial market is a zero-sum game. What we believe to be important is low fees and that a saver gains access to different markets and exposures in order to spread the risk. We have set up an effective process to maintain low fees since we buy one investment fund per required exposure – we are able to keep the fees low since one supplier gets all the volume per exposure.   Advinans’ view is that our range of investment funds covers the exposures established in financial research. In addition, within this range of investment funds, we have included ethical and sustainable funds based on a clear logic.   There is currently a great quantity of platforms for securities trading available in Sweden. The trend is to have the greatest selection possible, which we believe is not in the consumer’s interest, quite the contrary. A range of nearly 1,000 investment funds makes it more difficult for the majority of people, while the majority of the investment funds are way too expensive, high fees suit the bank/online broker/insurance company since they get back approx. 50 % of the fee as a commission from the investment fund companies (commission that Advinans pays back to you, which is why the same investment funds are up to 75 % cheaper with us).   There are, however, customers that seek active management or specific exposures (e.g. real estate and high yield fixed income funds). We have therefore made a thorough analysis and selection of active funds based on the premise of generating excess returns (we want to be clear that our analysis does not guarantee that an investment fund will generate future excess returns, just that the conditions exist for it to do so). We have also procured investment funds that provide exposure to specific markets (e.g. real estate, high-yield bonds, investment companies). By not working with commissions we are able to offer more niche funds at an attractive price.

Advinans assumes that risk is relative. If you have a long savings horizon, you can accept an absolute higher risk in order to get higher returns, even if you have a low risk preference. Similarly, Advinans reduces the absolute risk as you approach the withdrawal period, simply to ensure that you have access to the money when you need it. The savings horizon should thus weigh more heavily than the risk preference for the composition of an investment fund portfolio, even if different preferences with regard to risk-taking are obviously important.    Advinans calculates the absolute risk based on the EU’s risk classification (a scale of 1-7 based on volatility) and we calculate the volatility (a static measure of risk) on a five-year horizon.