Six years ago I wrote that the rise of the digital investor was unstoppable. Last weekend a Belgian newspaper ran an interesting cover page: nearly three in four 18-to-24-year-olds in Belgium now invest, and two-thirds of 25-to-34s. ING and Belfius are competing for them with free shares and commission-free ETFs up to age 24.
Interestingly, it was Het Laatste Nieuws, not a financial newspaper, that reported the numbers from Crelan's, a Belgian bank, research.
No surprise: back in late 2020 I published a Perspective called “The Unstoppable Rise of the Digital Investor,” and spent the next year turning it into a series. It started by tracing the do-it-yourself investor all the way back to the 1975 “Big Bang” of discount brokerage, then tracked the shifts almost as they happened: the arrival of the internet, then mobile banking, the relentless rise of ETFs, zero-cost commissions, the surge of retail investors (March 2021), and crypto arriving inside broker apps (May 2021), with traditional banks moving into online brokerage throughout.
One line in the newspaper matters more than the headline. Crelan’s expert Koen Van Audenhove says that at a young age, what counts most is building the habit, even without much capital. Exactly. That has been the whole argument all along.
Investing at banks and brokers starts at 18, because that is the youngest age at which people can legally invest on their own. Between the teenagers already borrowing a parent’s account (ssssht) and the higher-income families quietly buying ETFs from birth, there is a large, underserved middle that wants in but doesn’t know where to start.
That gap is exactly why we are building Young Early Starters - YES: real investing for children & teens aged 8 to 18, always with a parent, built around education and the long-term habit the experts keep recommending. Not a simulation. Not a savings account.
The unstoppable rise of the digital investor was never going to stop at 18. The question is probably not whether young people will invest. It is whether they are properly prepared, by schools and by society. Imagine where they’d be if someone opened that door at eight.
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#YES #fintech #financialliteracy #investing #Belgium
