Transparency

TRANSPARENCY

HOW WE OPERATED FROM Q1'20 TO Q1'23

Unlike most of the financial industry, we promote intellectually honest, simple and transparent investing, and think we should be fully transparent with you about the way we function.

From its inception in Q1’2020 until Q1’23, 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 including server fees, financial data, software, and technical assistance. 

The most significant investment was Raph’s time – over 1,000 hours in just the first two years.

We are very motivated to keep going after all the positive feedback received. But, in order to maintain our highest quality and grow, we faced a difficult choice. Reduce the amount of time Raph and the team spends on the website, or partially fund the website through external revenues.

HOW WE WANT TO GROW

PREMIUM SERVICES

In Q1’23 we started our first premium service – investment coaching – to meet our readers, and to partially offset growing costs of running the website. 

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 on these criteria, and our supporters can stop payments at any time.

Outside of premium services, we may receive a small commission (also called affiliate fee) from brokers or personal finance app companies if you sign up using a link on our website. That will help us grow and comes at no cost to you.

Our commitments

Why 90-95% of our content is conflict-free

We think this is the cleanest way of avoiding conflicts of interest while increasing chances that we’ll be around in the future for investors to benefit from our insights. Here’s why:

  • Investing & ETF Guides are conflict-free – Affiliate commissions leave most of the website free from any possible perceived conflict of interest, as 90-95% of topics we cover are unrelated to brokers or personal finance apps.
  • No collaboration with asset managers – We do not collaborate 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 and some online services in Europe.
  • No commercial guest posts or sponsored content – We do not accept any guest posts from firms, as they may have hidden agendas and sell products not in the best interest of our readers.
  • No affiliate income from book, documentary or movie reviews 
  • Complete editorial control – Finally, we keep full control of what’s on the website.

Broker reviews

5-10% of our content is related to Brokers or Personal Finance products

  • Methodologies first – Over the first 3 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.
  • Broker review transparency – 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.

Advertisement

Selected banner ads from brokers or finance apps may appear on our site. We only promote firms we like and that we’d potentially recommend to our friends and family. Under each ad, we always include a transparency disclosure.

HELP FROM OUR COMMUNITY

Other Ways Of Helping Us

If you enjoyed our work and want to help us in our journey there are also other ways to contribute:

  • Help Us By Spreading the Word
  • Help Us Financially 

Please consult this dedicated page with explanations on how to do it.

HOW WE WANT TO CONTRIBUTE

Our Approach To SOCIETY ContribuTION

Giving Back

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 are currently exploring 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 [email protected]

Thank you for your support,

The Bankeronwheels.com Team 🚴