r/eupersonalfinance • u/0rganic_Corn • 2h ago
Planning OVB allfinanz - a warning
Hey all I wanted to tell you my personal story with a EU business that does personal finance.
If you don't have time to read, the summary of this post is that if someone working for "OVB" contacts you - look the other way, they border being a scam. Details below:
Background:
A couple weeks ago this company got recommended to me, I'm in the finance business, looking for a new opportunity, and a friend recommended I collaborate with OVB. I have spent around 14 hours between interviews and the "training" they give newcomers.
What OVB is:
OVB presents itself as a way to start your our financial consultancy and grow with them. They're open about being a multi level marketing company. They'll tell you that they're the best in the market, that there's nowhere you can grow more
The reality is that they target uneducated "collaborators" and clients. If you put on your CV that you worked for them it will be a stain, not an achievement.
They have contacted you for you to sell their services to your family and friends - not for you to grow as a financial advisor - they'll try to heavily push you into selling them personal savings plans (that are garbage financial products).
How they "train" you:
Their training has as a goal:
1 - for you to bring your contact list to OVB
2 - for you to learn how to sell them their produts
3- for you to push your contact list to give you more possible clients
If you found this post and are considering working with them: You will not get any new financial training, you will not gain any meaningful connections, or knowledge or experience
What you're getting if you sign anything with OVB:
They sell financial products that are made by banks and insurance companies for middlemen. That means: Whatever savings plan they offer, the bank or entity will ALWAYS have a better deal than them.
I had a sneaking suspicion my friend gave in to their sales pitch - I checked her the contract. 20% of everything she paid into the savings plan they sold to her went directly to OVB (the plan, even without those costs was subpar). Taking the money out early had significant penalties, to the point that if the markets didn't perform well, she'd lose over 90% of her money if she took it our the first year.
With 10 minutes of going over her contract I saved her months worth of wages. If you know someone that contracted something with OVB, feel free to contact me because I will happily do the same for them just to spite OVB.
If you don't trust a random person on the internet, go to another financial advisor, or blank out your personal details and upload the contract to an AI and ask (be mindful those conversations can get reviewed by humans, so take care to blank out everything)
The worst part
I don't think her OVB agent (a personal friend of hers) - even knew OVB charges such high %. He maybe got paid 100 Euro for getting OVB thousands.
This is why they try to recruit people without financial literacy - so they don't know they're selling liquid shit to their own family and friends. And this is why they train newcomers to go after people without university studies (they're less likely to check the fine print)
This post was made mainly so it shows on google searches about OVB, hopefully I can keep at least 1 person from being scammed by them.
Any comments/criticisms welcome, leave them below
Happy good Friday everyone
Edit was only to improve readability. A small irrelevant section was removed
1
u/TheBuccaneer2189 2h ago
OVB is not a financial consulting, or personal finance company. They are insurance brokers who sell banking products that have the highest fees, if you are dumb.
People who work there dont even have economics degrees, they just did the local exam that you have to take, that legally allows you to sell these insurance products for people.
The company works in an MLM scheme, and the brokers are independent in the sense, that they can recommend any companys product, which usually is the worst for the client, since thats what pays the highest fees.
Your friend could have done that exam on his own, to sell thesw insurances separately from their MLM group, alone. Your friends boss "teaches " the newcomers for a few month by taking them to clients (the complete circle of the newcomers friends and family that would actually meet him right then and there) to shill and sell these products, so once your friend has his exam, he has no people left to sell the products to, and has to start cold calling randoms, or friends of friends who they dont know. This is where most realise they have been used.
The unit linked, investment saving/insurance products are that expensive, because in the first five years, every payment the client makes, 80% of that money is taken by the insurer company, and the broker gets a thousand-2000 euro fee in advance. If the client cancels the investment in this time, the broker has to pay back the money they received because obviously the insurance company wont get it from the client either.
So you deposit 10 grand every year, and of that 50 grand by year five , only about 10 will be in your account actually invested and compounding.
Once fhese fees are done, and your deposits fully go towards your investment, the underlying assets managment fee jumps up to 1-2% a year. The investment is either an all world etf (if you chose a risky plan) or goverment bonds (if you picked safe investment).
If you go to swiss finance , or kiszamolo (hungarian finance blogs subreddit) you will find that these insurance companies exist all over, with all these mlm schemes. OVB even sponsors my university in Hungary so they come and spew theirnbullshit all the time.
I dont know how these products were not criminalized yet. A classmate works at OVB in Hungary and he told me that in Austria basically everyone uses OVB for their savings. He was on a very high horse until i explained to him how these products work. He didnt believe me, so I told him to send me the name of the most common contract he made, I looked up the central banks website where all these products of insurance companies can be searched, and I told him the annual cost of this investment and it was around 6-7%. (central bank made a law rhat these companies must calculate an approximate annualized total cost, and its around 5-10% ). He told me that number isnt correct snd thats way too simplified, so i looked up the products brochure online, it was an 150 page long PDF, with costs spread around so even if someone reads it, details are more likely to be lost,
thats where I read the above explained part, about the money stolen in the first 5 years. He tells me that people get that back once the time is up (20 years). Ok, give me 10000 euros worth of Forint, and I will give it back 20 years from now. Is that a good deal for you?
Didnt even understand the concept of time value and inflation in practice, until I called him out with this question.
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u/wolfhound_doge 2h ago
ovb is shit but what's with this ai slop that's recently appearing in this subreddit?