Half of NL residents afraid to invest: AFM

Nearly half of Netherlands households have sufficient savings to invest but don't, according to the Netherlands Authority on Financial Markets (AFM). Even though investing can yield hundreds of euros more per year than saving, according to the regulator, especially now that interests rates on savings are very low.

About a quarter of households invest, which is lower than other European countries. The regulator thinks this may be because Netherlands residents are already building up wealth through their pension, which is not always the case in other countries.

The AFM looked at 5 million non-investing households in the Netherlands and noted that 3.1 million of them had an average of about 20,000 euros available for investing. That is after deducting a buffer to cover things like the washing machine breaking, for example. The AFM ran a series of simulations and found that investing yielded more than saving in three-quarters of the cases. How much more depends on the investment choices.

The regulator also noted that one in ten households that do invest has no or an insufficient buffer for unforeseen expenses.