Hi all, I’m moving soon to Finland (jee) and want to keep investing as I have in the last few years; As reference, I’ve been investing in ETFs both in the Uk and Australia, and my strat is frequent (once or twice a week) dollar-cost averaging with relatively small amounts.

I have researched a lot but would appreciate if anyone could confirm the following:

1. There are no local ETF providers, or big-name brands (e.g. iShares, Vanguard) listing directly in Helsinki’s stock exchange; NordNet and other banks have regular Funds, which are more or less ETF’s predecessors, but for actual ETFs you gotta go to some other european stock exchange (e.g. Germany)
2. Share savings account (Osake­säästötili), which is similar in concept to the UK’s ISA scheme, is a no-go because it doesn’t handle (non-local) ETFs
3. Double taxation on dividends are a problem, and I rather avoid the chasing up, that would mean buying only Accumulative ETFs (Kasvuosuudet) instead of Dividend paying (Tuotto-osuudet), or also buying UK-based ETFs that seemingly don’t get taxed at source (https://www.degiro.fi/helpdesk/tax/withholding-tax/which-witholding-tax-rate-applied-income)

4. For non-local brokers, Degiro seems the cheapest option (€0-€0.5), cons are that it doesn’t auto-fill taxes for you
4.1 The €0 fee cost tier for ETFs is great in paper, but not really because the reduced selection is all over the place

5. As for local brokers, NordNet seems to be the cheapest one, but still charging non-trivial fee amounts (starting at €9-€10-€15)
6. NordNet as two monthly-saving schemes (kuukausisaastaminen) that have reduced fees
6.1 The “fund” one don’t have ETFs (duh, see #2) and cost €15 per month, so a no-go
6.2 The “ETF” one is €2.5 per month up to 4 ETFs (on any stock market?), but only once a month (it would be awesome if you could have multiple and with different timings)

So, assuming I got all of the above right, the strat would be:

* Get a NordNet monthly-saving ETF agreement, buying 4 German-based accumulative ETFs once every month
* For extra buys, go to Degiro and buy German-based Accumulative ETFs (could be any other EU countries too) or Uk-Based ETFs (either type) as often as desired

Thanks very much for any advise
Much appreciated
Kiitos

4 comments

  1. Valid conclusions. I (and most people that I know) do that, except that I do my extra buys also via Nordnet. Before using Degiro I’d check if they automatically inform tax authorities or not. If you use Nordnet or a Finnish bank you don’t have to inform tax authorities on your investment activities.

    Edit: nice, you had the tax part already figured out!

  2. You have things quite clear already. I would definitely check out Lynx (interactive brokers based) broker as an alternative to Degiro for direct stock buys.

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