Overview
Bart Vanhaeren is the CEO and co-founder of InvestSuite, based in Leuven, a company he started in June 2018. Since May 2026 he has also been CEO and co-founder of Young Early Starters, and he has sat on the supervisory board of Leuven MindGate since June 2016.
From January 2013 to May 2018 he was chief executive officer of Bolero and, over the same period, managing director and board member of KBC Securities. He co-founded Bolero Crowdfunding in September 2014. He had joined KBC Bank & Verzekering earlier, working as a management consultant from 1999 to 2001, heading organisation for Central and Eastern Europe from 2003 to 2006, and serving as CEO of KBC Consumer Finance from 2007 to 2012. Before that he was EHS manager at GE Capital/TIP, EHS audit manager for Europe, Africa and the Middle East at Levi Strauss & Co., and a management consultant at Arthur D. Little from 1993.
He holds an MBA from IMD and master's degrees from KU Leuven in financial economics, environmental health engineering, and civil engineering and chemistry.
Career history
In the news
- 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
- at Young Early Starters - YES, we build a digital investing app for kids & teens. And we give them a plush fox. Two books I recently stumbled on — Darren Hudson Hick's ‘The Love of Analog’ and Ian Bogost's ‘The Small Stuff’ — put words to it. Analogue things are inefficient on purpose: they ask for care, and care is what makes a thing matter. The trading apps are engineered for the opposite — one tap, a small jolt, repeat. We would rather grow the slower habits an investor actually needs: patience, attention, the instinct to
- Everyone knows The Nutcracker. But likely few people know the real one. But what has that to with teaching children to invest? E.T.A. Hoffmann's original, from 1816, is somehow darker and stranger than the Christmas ballet: written to startle children, not soothe them, by a rebel judge who wanted to set young imaginations free. (Tchaikovsky worked from a sweetened French version; the sanitising started early.) A few thoughts on fairy tales, imagination in my next article, and why we are building Young Early Starters - YES as
- A few weeks ago, in Queens, I visited the Museum of the Moving Image because I wanted to get inspired and in particular learn more about Sesame Street. I knew the songs. What I did not know was that it may be the most rigorously researched television programme ever made, built by creatives, educators and scientists who, back in 1969, asked what was then a heretical question: could a screen actually teach a child? It could, and fifty years of studies keep saying so. Which left me with a question of my own, the one we think about
- Our German roadshow is almost coming to an end. We had a wonderful time in Frankfurt and Munich, and today the Young Early Starters - YES team @monica Daniel Koch, myself and Oscar is in Berlin where we met our friends of House of Finance & Tech Berlin Lana Brandorne Aliya Abdullina. Looking forward to participate the HoFT's Finwell Summit in December! #financialliteracy #investing #education #edtech #fintech
- Close to our launch in Germany, and I loved the first stop with colleagues Monica Marpole-Bird and Daniel Koch in Frankfurt last weekend: Finance26, the new generation of the long-running World of Trading. Over the past few years I attended many start-up and tech events, so it had been a while since I was at a pure investment event: no payment apps, no buy-now-pay-later, no credit pitches, just markets and investing. Wonderful! But I had not realised how many (day-)trading platforms Germany has. We were surrounded by live charts
- Germany, here we come. 🇩🇪 We are taking YES on the road for our first German roadshow, and we couldn’t be more excited: we are going to meet our very first customers. Along the way you’ll find us at two events — including the big one, Bits & Pretzels in Munich, and Finance26 in Frankfurt. The route: 📍 Frankfurt — Finance26 📍 Munich — Bits & Pretzels 📍 Berlin 📍 Hamburg We’ve presented across Europe and in the US, and yes, we’ll be on stage and at our booth again. But this time there’s something extra: real conversations with
- Would you hand a ten-year-old a real share of Disney? A Belgian senator got his first share at ten, a stake in the Ghent tram, and cheerfully rode “his” tram for the rest of his life. A few thoughts on why the age you buy your first stock might matter more than which stock it is. Curious where you land: too young, or exactly right? #financialliteracy #investing
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