No asset-manager sponsorships. Limited affiliate exposure. Full editorial control.
Last updated: April 2026
Unlike most of the financial industry, we promote intellectually honest, simple and transparent investing, and think we should be fully transparent with our readers about the way we function.
From its inception in Q1’2020 until 2023, the site was an investment and cycling blog, managed by Raph as a personal project. This period didn’t generate revenue; instead, it incurred significant costs:
After the first 3 years, we faced a difficult choice. We were very motivated to keep going after all the positive feedback received. But, in order to maintain our highest quality and grow, in 2023 we faced a difficult choice.
We had to choose between:
In 2023 and 2024 we started a transition phase with our first premium service – investment coaching – to meet our readers, and to partially offset growing costs of running the website. By end of 2024 we started covering some of our fixed business costs with coaching.
We’re a small, family-run website passionate about helping you navigate the financial world with ease and honesty. Given our prior careers and fairly low-cost lives, we have some optionality and are currently not required to go back into the corporate world. But, with two little ones joining our family, it’s time for us to level up and grow beyond just breaking even.
Starting in 2026, we aim to roll out exciting new premium services, including Premium Research. While coaching is covering fixed costs it’s not enough to sustain us. Our goal is to get to profitability by 2027 while staying true to our mission.
Read: 4 Things I Learned from 4 Years of Blogging →
Read: 5 Years of Empowering Investors: The Journey So Far & The Ride Ahead! →
We think that premium services empower investors and promote sound investing, and we are paid for the quality of guidance we provide. We do not promote any products. We are judged solely on these criteria, and our supporters can stop payments at any time.
80-90% of the content on BoW is completely free. So, we think premium services is the cleanest way of complementing our free educational mission to the society, and avoiding conflicts of interest, while increasing chances that we’ll be around in the future for investors to benefit from our insights.
Most of the website is free from any possible perceived conflict of interest, as 90% of topics we cover are unrelated to brokers or personal finance apps.
While we are uniquely connected to the investment world through our personal/professional networks to understand the market and bring value to our readers, we do not have any commercial interaction with any asset manager or bank in promoting their funds that would impact our objective assessments. This is the case – through retrocession fees – for the vast majority of financial advisors in Europe. Various websites and portals in Europe also receive compensation from ETF issuers for publishing pseudo-independent analysis.
We do not accept any guest posts from banks or asset managers, as they may have hidden agendas and sell products not in the best interest of our readers.
We do not receive any income that would impact our reviews. We solely promote what’s in the best interest of our readers, and we happily promote other European/UK content creators through our Weekend Reading and Book review series. We believe in promoting education and sound financial guidance.
Finally, we keep full control of what’s on the website.
We are perceived as some of the harshest critics in Europe. And we must say that we take intellectual pleasure in uncovering issues and ways that the financial industry tries to mislead investors. Raph would rather go back to his prior career, rather than forgo the ability to have a free voice and criticise financial products, strategies and behaviors.
We are known for providing critical opinions on Investment Strategies or Funds (including our ESG series), but also on some academic research. But, this approach extends also to brokers. Some of our widely shared critical guides include:
We started Banker on Wheels to help individual investors. And sometimes that means pushing the industry in the right direction. In 2024, our guide flagged a leading EU broker for misleading insurance claims on their front page. They quietly removed them. In 2026, we have been featured in the Financial Times with our investigation into post-PFOF single market-maker exchanges.
“Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome”
— Charlie Munger
We are generally dissatisfied with the quality of broker reviews on the web. This is due to two reasons. First, most sites have unqualified staff and lack of knowledge to create methodologies, and investigate pitfalls. Second, as Charlie Munger says – incentives drive outcomes (broker scores). Most sites are heavily conflicted, promote the highest-earning brokers and/or are completely dependent on broker revenues. These brokers can exercise pressure on these sites, as they have a unique revenue source.
Here is how we tackle these problems:
Over the first 4 years of running the website, we have earned trust by producing quality broker selection methodologies that were widely shared for their objectivity. These guides were conflict-free, as until 2024 we did not publish any broker review and did not generate any income from partnerships. Most broker websites do not have methodologies, or those methodologies are very basic/undisclosed.
Publishing broker reviews forces us to follow rigorous and objective methodologies to assess brokers or apps – precisely because of a possible perception of conflict of interest. We publish such frameworks in dedicated articles and guides to make our selection and criteria transparent. Our reviews are done prior to entering in relationship with a broker.
For example, most European/UK Banks have no affiliate programs. Didn’t find them on most broker review websites? That’s because of this very same reason. On BoW banks receive very high scores when safety considerations combined with low fees justify them. Again, we receive no income from banks.
We don’t want this to exceed c. 20% of website revenues (in 2024 this was <5%) to be independent from this source of revenue. This way we can break any relationship if we feel a broker is not fair/providing value to our readers. For example, we think that a website that is getting 80%-100% of revenue from brokers through affiliate commissions may never be in a position to impose standards. We have managed to achieve some wins e.g. by making brokers remove information about misleading guarantees.
Our contributors use our methodologies and guidelines to draft broker reviews. But, they have no insight into our partnerships with brokers, so they can always raise any issue they perceive, or flag unfair treatment.
Albeit unwillingly, we can always go back to contracting or our prior professional lives – that are magnitudes more financially rewarding – rather than convert this site into a pure commercial endeavour. The site’s years of free educational content is a testimony that our mission is our first driver. The site would also lose a lot of its fun and values if that started being the case.
In 2025, we tested working with a high reputation ad agency called Mediavine, that optimises Google Ads.
However, based on this trial we concluded that it reduced the user experience and we decided to terminate the collaboration with Mediavine.
Over the first couple of weeks in April 2026, ads will disappear. Banker on Wheels will remain ads-free to provide you with the best reading experience.
Some people won’t use a broker, or any of our services. But, they still want to say thank you, as 90% of the site is free. You can always buy us a coffee if we made a tiny difference in your life. The best part for us? We always love to read the small messages that come with your coffee.
Buy Us a Coffee →Giving Back — Once we are profitable, we also aim to give some of our profits to chosen charities. It’s just another way of making an impact on people’s lives. We will be disclosing the partners and share of profits in the coming months.
Free Coaching Sessions — We have in the past and are open to providing free-of-charge coaching sessions to parts of society that need it the most. If you feel that someone needs it, let us know.
For any requests regarding our contributions, please contact us at [email protected]
Thank you for your support,
Raph & Francesca 🚴🚴
