Save® was founded with an important mission: to help people earn a higher yield on their savings. We are fundamentally changing how things are done in the world of finance in a way that puts the customer first. We are reimagining the concepts of risk and reward for everyday people who want to save money. We are putting more money into the pockets of people who have been short-changed, overcharged and under-rewarded by the financial system.
Our company DNA combines the best of America and Finland. Two different places with different cultures and ways of doing business. But we believe that Save can combine the best of two worlds: the Nordic model of our Founder and CEO Michael’s homeland of Finland, with its approach of pragmatic solutions and mitigation of risk, combined with our Houston, Texas-based team led by our COO Adam Watts with its entrepreneurial dynamism and American optimism.
We want people to have a safety net for their savings and be able to capitalize on the entrepreneurial upside of market investments.
Here are a few reasons why we believe the Save® company culture will be a winning combination for your savings.
Re-thinking the Concept of “Risk Capital” for Savings
One of the first principles of investing is “Risk and Reward.” If you are willing to take more risk with your money, you should be rewarded for it with higher returns. If you are not willing to put your money at risk, you should be willing to settle for lower but steady returns.
In the current low-interest rate environment, we’ve ended up with a situation where bank accounts are paying near-zero interest. If customers aren’t satisfied with earning no yield on their cash savings, they have to take risks in the markets.
We believe we’ve found a solution for conservative investors or savers who need stable yields but without putting their cash deposits at risk. We give you the American-style entrepreneurial upside of smooth, steady market returns combined with the Nordic-style safety net of avoiding the risk of investment loss.
Putting the Customer Back at the Center of the Business Relationship
Too often in the world of finance, customers – especially everyday savers with simple bank accounts – are treated almost as an afterthought. Money talks, and if you’re just an average American with 3 months of savings in the bank, most banks aren’t listening to you.
At Save®, we have aggressively reimagined the relationship between savers and the banks that host their savings accounts. We are genuinely putting the customer first. Everything we do is focused on, “how can we cut costs for the customer, how can we pass those cost savings on to the customer, how can we enlist the customer as a partner in helping to boost their own yields on their savings?”
Everything we do at Save is focused on giving value back to the customer. We have developed pragmatic, fair customer-centered solutions that provide a better value for all while also being proactively innovative in redesigning the way our industry works.
The Safety Net: FDIC Insurance
Every Save® account is connected with a FDIC-insured bank account. Your deposits are never at risk. We only invest the interest on your deposits, so no matter what happens with the ups and downs of the markets, your initial deposit is never at risk for investment loss.
The Upside: Market Investments
Instead of settling for near-zero interest rates, Save gives you the upside of market investments. We invest the interest on your deposits in a diversified, tech-optimized investment portfolio that includes cash equivalents, stocks, bonds, commodities and real estate exchange traded funds (ETFs). Portfolios are rebalanced daily and selected to protect your money from loss while generating stable returns that are potentially higher than any high-yield savings account, CD or bond index fund.
We are bringing the benefits of financial technology that previously might have been used only by big institutional investors, and we are making it available to everyday people with a savings account.
The world’s first Debit Invest Card
The Save Debit Invest Card uses our portfolio technology to reward our customers for everyday debit card spending. For every dollar of signature spend with your Save card, we’ll give you a dollar of equivalent portfolio investments. This is the world’s first debit card that boosts people’s saving power on a dollar for dollar basis.
Instead of other rewards cards that encourage people to spend more money or cash in their reward points for gifts that they might not really need, the Save Debit Invest Card is a dose of Nordic-style pragmatism: whenever you spend money, we’ll help you boost your savings.
The Save Debit Invest Card can add significant growth potential to your savings account by letting people participate in the upside of market returns without having to invest any more money, take any risks, or otherwise change their behavior as savers and investors. Depending on how much you spend and how the overall markets perform each year, your savings account might outperform the stock market.
Combining the debit card with the savings account makes for a very compelling way to save without risk.
Safe but also engaging
Most bank products are unexciting and deliver little. Put in your money; earn near-zero yields. There’s safety but no upside. Most market investments are not safe. Invest your money and you might experience short-term volatility, you might lose your investment, you might lose money that you can’t afford to lose. There’s upside but no safety.
Save is something new and different. It’s safe and engaging – you can keep your money safe while still participating in the markets. The same process you would use for opening a simple bank account can now be used to get your money working for you. None of your cash has to sit on the sidelines now. And you get regular notifications and can watch your portfolio grow through the Save app and dashboard with daily portfolio updates.
A Safety Net That Optimizes Your Upside and is Fair on Fees
Too often in financial services, the financial gains of customers’ investment money are not fully returned to customers. Too many customers are getting short-changed by high fees, underperforming advisers, and opaque arrangements. Think about a typical bank customer that earns near-zero interest on their savings while paying monthly fees and high interest on credit cards. Think of all the financial advisers that charge 2% fees per year, whether they make money or not.
Save offers no-risk investments but also doesn’t charge any fees if there isn’t any return in the portfolios. This means we are fully aligned with our customers. We thrive only when there is strong performance, and our customers are happy. We believe that it’s the right thing to do and it’s also ultimately better for our business: because we want our customers to stay with us and keep growing their savings for years to come.
Whether you’re from Texas or Finland or anywhere else in the world, we believe that Save is a compelling new way to help you earn higher yields on your savings while avoiding the risks, costs and downsides of other types of investments and savings accounts. If you want to get the best of both worlds, with Nordic-style safety and Texas-style dynamism, sign up for a Save account today.
Learn more and sign up for an account today at joinsave.com
