Inyova: How sparkly is the Swiss Fintech Star in 2025?

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Important note: As of October 2025, Inyova is only open to investors from Switzerland and Germany. Expansion to more countries is planned, but not yet announced.

Inyova at a glance

The star rating reflects my impression of the provider after investing with them since 2018. It does not include my assessment of Inyova Grow, their new product for direct investments in company bonds.

Disclosure: I’m an investor in Inyova since I participated in their 2022 crowd-fundraising, when I purchased a small amount of shares. In my judgment, this review was not influenced by my investment – I invested precisely because I think they have a great investment product! Still, I tried to also point out weak points where I notice them.

Category	Actively managed funds
Country of origin	Switzerland
Geographical focus of investments	Mostly Europe and North America
Minimum investment	CHF 2000 (Swiss branch) / EUR 2000 (German branch)
Cost	1.2% of invested amount per year up to CHF/EUR 49’999.-, 1.1% from 50k, 1% from 150k and 0.9% from 500k
Internal Rate of Return (IRR)*	IRR of my own portfolio with the provider over the last 5 years: 6.93% 3 years: 8.32%
Referral programme	Receive CHF 60.- (CHF 5.- per month over 12 months) and support Invest4Change by entering the referral code ef318 when joining Inyova.
Similar offers	Carbon Collective (USA) SwellInvesting (USA) and Circa5000 (UK) were similar fintechs but failed to scale and ceased operating in 2019 and 2024, respectively.

*including fees, as of Sept 2025. Please note that the IRR is merely intended to give you a real-life view of how an actual user’s portfolio (mine) developed over time. Yours could look better or worse, depending on your investment preferences and timing.

Sustainable investing, tailored to your values

Inyova is a fintech start-up from Zürich, Switzerland. The name stands for “INvest in YOur VAlues” and describes their main selling point: investment funds tailored to fit your values. This featue, which I have still not seen anywhere else, is the coolest part of investing with Inyova:

1. You start by choosing between different impact topics, such as education, circular economy or clean water.
2. Now you select negative criteria, that you DO NOT want to invest in, such as nuclear or animal testing.
3. Based on your preferences the Inyova algorithm sets up a diverse portfolio of publicly traded stocks out of a hand-picked basket (37 in my case). This basket is pre-screened by Inyova to not include any companies that don’t match their criteria, sustainability or otherwise.

This is a huge advantage compared to conventional investment funds. These may also focus on sustainable companies, but the fund managers put them together without any way for you to influence its composition. Take it or leave it. Sometimes, you don’t even know all the companies you invest in, because fund fact sheets often only show the Top 10 stocks. You can read more about the issues with conventional funds here.

Creating a strategy is free, so you can just sign up and give it a go! Don’t forget to use my link at the top of the page before you invest though or you’ll miss out on 12 months of free investing 😉

Love it or change it!

Based on a few questions you answer about your financial situation and investment horizon, Inyova creates a risk profile. The algorithm then suggests a suitable split between stocks and bonds: the lower your capacity to tolerate risk, the less stocks and the more bonds you should have. While this may be sound from an investment theory perspective, bonds are just not very attractive in the current low-interest environment. For my own portfolio, I therefore overrode the suggestion and went for 100% stocks.

In another step away from ordinary fund managers, Inyova selection of shares is further customisable as well: You can remove or add individual companies, as long as they are part of the basket.

Does it create impact or is it merely “sustainable”?

One of Inyova’s “Unique Selling Propositions”, or USPs, is transparency. You know exactly what you have in your portfolio. Unlike most other players on the market, all companies in Inyova’s basket do make a positive and active contribution towards sustainable development, be it in renewable energy or clean water.

Nevertheless, purists would say that Inyova does not actually let you do “Impact Investing”. Impact in that sense would mean making something happen that would not have without your investment. The publicly traded shares in Inyova’s basket are always bought from other investors who are looking to sell, so you don’t finance the company in that sense.

So, how can they actually influence large companies?

Inyova only has one real way for creating impact through publicly traded shares, and that is active ownership. Also known as stewardship or shareholder activism, active share owners directly engage with the companies they invest in: by voting in shareholder resolutions or, more intently, by contacting them about specific issues. Apart from institutional investors, NGOs and finance activists, this is very uncommon for a financial service provider.

Inyova occasionally communicates about such activities. According to a newsletter Inyova sent to their investors, they directly engaged with four companies in 2022, including Tesla (which dropped out of the portfolio soon after), Netflix and BMW. More recently, in 2025, they voted for stronger protective measues for diversity at Netflix and for improving human rights in the cobalt supply chain of BMW’s electric vehicles. I also recall a case where a media company in Inyova’s portfolio was found to be supporting greenwashing campaigns, which I believe led to a critical enquiry (I couldn’t find the details anymore).

With Inyova Grow, the company launched a new product with a more direct approach to impact investing in 2024. Grow allows investors to crowdfund loans to companies, which use these directly for specific green projects. As such, it works similar to other platforms I talk about in this blog, such as Trine or Lendahand, but is still a lot less mature. Grow’s approach is entirely different from the main offering, so I will talk about it in a separate post.

Thinking about the future in more ways than one: portfolios for Kids and retirement

In times long past, saving used to be most people’s way of benefitting from the long-term effects of compound interest. At interest rates of 3-5% per year, the money on a saving account would develop into a nice sum over the years: a useful way of preparing for your kids’ future or your own retirement. Now, with interest rates near zero, inflation gradually eats up the value of such savings.

Many banks therefore advertise investment funds for long-term saving. The idea: over time, stock markets have always expanded, at an average rate of 5-7%. As such, stocks are a reasonably safe long-term bet and therefore a good option for saving over decades. Incidentally, the banks also make more money with investments than with savings accounts.

Inyova offers two dedicated options: Inyova for Kids works exactly the same as a regular Inyova investment account, with the difference that you can set separate investment strategies for each child, should you want to. Fees and minimum investments are also the same, so the point seems to be more of an emotional benefit.

The 3a pension accounts are only available to Swiss clients who want the tax benefits of the “Pillar 3a”. As with a traditional 3a account, the idea is to pay in money each year, but of course invest it with Inyova. Other than that, the same benefits and restrictions apply. I made use of the offer only once when it was launched in 2022, when I invested the maximum deductible amount. Unfortunately, I should say, because this account’s value has grown by a healthy 32% until now, three years later. Another such investment account I have with another bank grew by about 20% over the same time.

My experience with Inyova: Still one of my best investments!

Inyova has a somewhat personal dimension to me. It was one of the first “alternative” investment options I found on my journey towards sustainable investing. When I realised that they had their offices not just in my city, but literally around the corner, they definitely had my interest! Later I attended some events hosted by this young but very ambitious team, meeting the founders. Their drive and conviction convinced me of the approach, even though they did not have a track record yet. Personal contact with a young fintech can go a long way in creating the trust necessary to make an investment!

I’ve now been invested with Inyova since 2018, starting with a minimum investment of CHF 2’000 and a monthly savings plan. I chose a broad range of handprint themes for my strategy, focussing on environmental issues such as clean energy. I also added a few social ones, such as healthcare. When they added circular economy and plant-based foods as new themes, I made use of my yearly free strategy change and included them as well.

Impact investing with Inyova – what about performance?

Looking back at my first review back in 2020, I was not just convinced, but inspired by their approach to investing! That was to no small degree due to the stellar performance of my portfolio: after 18 months, my time-weighted return was at 75%!! My Inyova portfolio had outperformed all my other investments by far, at comparable cost. Already rare for a single stock, it was no small feat for a portfolio composed of 30+ stocks.

Back then I criticised the lack of transparency behind the performance. It was not clear which companies contributed to the performance. Was it all due to one or two companies with ridiculous performance, suggesting an investment bubble? Or part of a wider trend benefiting sustainable firms?

Turns out, it was a bit of both. Here’s what my portfolio’s performance looks now, five years after I started impact investing with Inyova:

2019-2021 were in general great years for sustainability or ESG stocks. The years since showed more lacklustre performance: While some companies still performed well if they were able to capitalise off the green transition, but looking green alone was no longer enough.

Looking past the early hype

So, am I disappointed by the performance over the last 4 years? After all, my investment never surpassed the peak from November 2021. Well, yes and no. Yes, because during most of the boom I only had a small sum invested – and when I finally did invest more, performance was already at its highest. Life, right??

But the small bubble that burst in 2022 affected not only Inyova and sustainability shares. The MSCI World, a benchmark for stockmarkets worldwide, lost 18% that year. If we only look at the last three years after the initial hype my performance actually looks very solid!

Let’s look at the internal rate of return (IRR) of my investment:

Last 3 years: 8.32%
Last 5 years: 6.93%
Last 7 years: 9.66% (the almost exact duration of my investment)

Considering that you can usually expect 5-7% per year in the stock market, I’m very happy with that performance! Plus, the IRR is a great way to calculate a portfolio’s performance over time, but not great to assess an investment strategy. My bad timing of investing a lot near the peak negatively affects the IRR. So, we should also calculate the hypothetical interest rate had I invested everything at once, at the beginning: 10.6%

Over 7 years, that’s an excellent long-term performance! Sure, the overall stock market also performed well in this time. And past performance is no predictor of future performance. But Inyova was definitely a great – and more impactful! – investment nonetheless!

Keep in mind: this performance was the result of a strategy tailored to my values. I created it by selecting my preferred handprint and footprint topics. I don’t know how Inyova’s overall basket of stocks performed during that time.

The interface: More userfriendly, but still not perfect

Conclusion: Is Inyova the best way to invest in stocks?

Well, I’m not prone to exaggeration, so I won’t go that far. But it’s the best way I’ve seen so far. With it’s focus on traded stocks, Inyova is better suited as a core piece of your investment strategy than other impact investment providers. They assume more responsibility through active ownership than the vast majority of banks out there. Sure, the fees, at usually 1.2%, could be lower, but right now I’m not aware of a cheaper, similar provider. And the performance of impact investing with Inyova passes the long-term stress test. As an impact-oriented investor, what more could you want?

Pros & Cons

💚 Sustainable investing tailor-made to your values

💚 Active-ownership approach to create impact

💚 Great long-term performance, but that may not be applicable to other portfolios and does not predict future performance.

💚 Transparent about the composition of your portfolio

💚/🚫 Mostly positive, but also some negative reviews on Trustpilot. Most bad reviews criticise negative performance for several years after the peak in 2021 – a fair point, considering that the overall market developed well. But as a rule of thumb, investing in shares needs a horizon of 5+ years. And over that duration, Inyova did well as my figures above show.

💚/🚫 At 1.2% expensive when compared to (impact-free) ETFs, but comparable to other (low-impact) active funds and at the same time more transparent about fees.

🚫 Only available to investors with a permanent residence in Switzerland or Germany. An expansion in other European countries is planned, but there is no timeline yet.

🚫 Relatively low diversification due to strict selection, making the portfolio more susceptible to market swings or political disruption.

🚫 Still limited track record. 8 years old, Inyova is still relatively young for a bank and they have not yet reached profitability. Maybe they will run out of funding 5 years from now and cease to exist. Don’t worry: This would not affect your investment! Inyova works with an established broker to trade and hold client investments. But there is a chance that if Inyova disappears, your impact investment will become just a regular, sustainable investment.

And what do you think?

Will Inyova’s approach win a lasting place in the financial landscape? Could it be for you? Let me know in the comments! And before you start your own investment, make sure that you use the referral code ef318 when joining Inyova. You will receive CHF 60.- (CHF 5.- per month over 12 months) and support Invest4Change 🙂

Hyped for impact investing? Head on over to my overview of options I’ve tried and reviewed!