OP: Finns invest diligently in equity funds – These items are now preferred

Finns have bought almost a record number of equity funds this year. This is evident from OP’s fund data.

According to the press release published by the bank, OP’s Individual customers invested in OP’s equity funds in January–August this year as much as 68 percent more gross than at the same time last year.

Customers have been on the buying side this year. At the beginning of the year, 69 percent of OP’s share funds’ trading was purchases.

When all OP’s funds are included, the share of purchases in the beginning of the year was 59 percent, says OP’s manager of wealth management clients Kai Kalajainen.

He states that, based on the data, investors now clearly believe specifically in the stock market

In particular, stock markets outside of Finland are popular with OP’s customers based on the most purchased funds.

“I am glad that Finnish investors are diversifying their investments worldwide, because the size of the Finnish investment market is only less than one percent of the entire world stock market,” Kalajainen commented in the press release.

Finns also look to the world

Finns have invested the most in the OP World Index. It is an international stock fund, whose assets are broadly spread across the stock markets of America, Asia and Europe.

The next most popular targets have been the OP-Amerikka Index investment fund, whose assets are invested in the shares of the largest stock-listed companies in North America, and the OP-Pohjoismaat Index, whose assets are invested in the shares of the largest stock-listed companies in the Nordic countries.

The last time OP’s Individual customers bought equity funds gross in the same direction was in 2021, when the investment funds’ capital grew at a record high, according to the Bank of Finland’s statistics

OP’s equity funds were bought gross in January-August 2021 only slightly more than in the corresponding period of this year, and net approximately 11 percent more.