an interesting question came to this H. Blog from the also H. Mr.WEBon, recently unpacked collaborator in Supersadic: What is the difference between an investment fund and a simple and common account in a bank ‘X’?
The debit account at the bank charges you for keeping your money and having it available whenever you feel like it. It uses what you deposit to lend to other customers who ask for credit. Their profit is the difference between what they charge the customer for their credit (say 34.0% rate) and what they pay you in interest (0.5%, ahem…read 33.5%!!!!).
They are not good savings or investment instruments because their yields are soooo low that inflation ends up eating your “profits”. If you want to know why see this post.
There is a banking savings option which are the promissory notes, in which you do not have daily availability of your money but you can have higher yields than in a debit account, although it is important to buy because some give you less than inflation (which this year is going to close at 6%). If you want to know how much they pay click here.
An investment fund puts your money together with that of other investors and places it in different types of instruments such as Cetes, stock exchanges, debt bonds of other countries or companies, etc., that you could not buy on your own… but their profit is a commission of everything you have invested and your yields, so it is in their interest that you earn so that you have more in your fund and they charge you more.
The yields depend on the instruments you choose, but they can easily exceed the 6% that you need to maintain the value of your money and in good years they can even give more than 20% annually.
These funds are marketed by mutual fund companies or operators (such as Fondika, Skandia, Actinver, Prudential, Invercap, Principal). The banks that offer them are those that have this type of institution in their financial group.
An important difference is that in the funds the availability of the money depends on what you invest it in, but in general terms they know that you are going to leave it for a while (the minimum horizon should be one year), but not in the bank: today they pay you and you take out all your payroll and bye bye.
Each instrument has a reason for being, and just as debit accounts are for having the money you are going to use during the month or fortnight, they are not for saving, in that case you would be better off with a fund or a promissory note.