First National Bank (FNB) has announced that individual consumers and institutional investors in South Africa will now have an opportunity to own shares from as little as R10 in some of the world’s best performing companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, Tesla, Coca Cola and Alphabet which owns Google.
The announcement follows the listing on the JSE of 10 FNB Exchange Traded Notes (ETNs) which are exchange-traded instruments that provide investors access to a wide variety of wealth creation assets. The listing provides individual and institutional investors an opportunity to diversify portfolios to manage risk. Investors will be able to gain access to the shares through FNB’s share trading platform via FNB Online or the FNB App.
Jacques Celliers, FNB CEO says, “We are excited to scale our invest activities by providing our customers and investors at large an opportunity to broaden exposure to wealth creation assets. Through FNB’s platform, customers have the opportunity to access both local and global shares which will allow them to diversify their portfolios during a very challenging time.”
FNB Wealth and Investments and Ashburton CEO, Sizwe Nxedlana, says, “Global fractional shares provide for an innovative product, designed specifically with financial inclusion in mind. Our aim is to drastically minimise barriers to entry for individual customers and institutional investors. Over the years, we have invested heavily to building platform capabilities in our investment business and this is starting to manifest in solutions which are customer-centric, and valuable for customers across all income categories. In a time of global uncertainty, investors cannot overlook opportunities to diversify but more importantly this particular offering means that every single individual or institution in South Africa has an equal opportunity to own shares beyond our borders.”
“We are very excited about the opportunities ahead as we continue to build an investment destination of choice for FNB customers and investors at large. In FNB’s recent annual results, we reported that our Wealth and Investments business saw a lift in revenue while the distribution of our solutions into the Bank’s customers continued to gain traction. We are looking forward to helping customers on their wealth creation journey through our platform-led strategy,” concludes Nxedlana.
The 10 Exchange Traded Notes (ETNs) from FNB were listed on the JSE on the 1st of October 2020.