StashAway announces total Assets Under Management (AUM) surpassing US$1 billion (RM4 billion) in 3.5 years after launch.

The Journey to One Billion

StashAway have surpassed US$1,000,000,000 (RM4,050,000,000) in assets under management in 3.5 years (42 months). This is comparable with the time it took the world’s largest digital wealth managers Wealthfront and 2nd largest Betterment to reach the same $1b milestone.

“Reaching this $1 billion USD milestone in less than 4 years is only one of the many signs we see that Asia truly wants a better way to create wealth: We see high conversion rates, large consistent deposits, and engagement with our educational content, for example. We’re still only scratching the surface for what’s possible when it comes to transforming wealth creation.” ~ Wong Wai Ken, Country Manager StashAway Malaysia

 

StashAway’s founders (L-R): Michele Ferrario (CEO), Nino Ulsamer (CTO) & Freddy Lim (CIO)

The Journey Thus Far

StashAway’s story and key milestones:

  • 2017: StashAway launches as a digital wealth management platform in Singapore.
  • 2018: StashAway is approved by SC and is the 1st robo advisory launched in Malaysia.
  • 2020: StashAway raises US$16m Series C fundraising round led by Square Peg.
  • 2020: StashAway Simple (money market fund) launches with 0% fees.
  • 2020: StashAway awarded Technology Pioneer by World Economic Forum for developing cutting edge technology .
  • 2020: StashAway approved by Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) as the 1st digital entrant to Middle East and North Africa (MENA).
  • 2021: StashAway hits US$1b AUM in 3.5 years from launch.

 

The Journey Ahead

When StashAway was founded, their objective was to significantly improve the way people build their wealth. Traditional investment options with high fees and low returns just was no longer acceptable.

But StashAway knows that their biggest competitor is actually cash in the bank! 46% of financial wealth in Asia is held in bank deposits (versus 14% in USA). This drives StashAway to focus not only on sophisticated investment principles and a great customer experience, but also financial education.

“It really is important to help more people understand how to better manage and grow their wealth. This relationship with our clients and the public has been a key to our fast growth.” ~Michele Ferrario, Co-founder & CEO of StashAway

StashAway believes one the keys to attracting assets under management is StashAway’s ability to generate strong returns even through the last few years’ volatility. Investors have been through 2 market corrections in 2018 and a market crash (and V-shaped recovery) in 2020.

StashAway portfolios since launch have generated returns ranging from 3.5% (lowest-risk portfolio) to 16.3% (highest risk portfolio) annualised. In 2020, StashAway’s portfolios’ returns ranged from 3.9% to 22.8% outperforming most of their same-risk benchmarks.

For 2021, StashAway believes sector rotation is probably going to be the biggest theme for investors. Thus could be triggered by vaccine progress and the ramp up in antitrust measures against big tech firms. Pandemic winners (e.g. big tech) could perform less well while beaten down sectors (e.g. Asia Pacific REITs) could reverse their fortunes. Investors can benefit from significant upside by preparing for it as we are still in the early innings of sector rotation.

“For the growth oriented portion of our moderate risk portfolios, there has always been a balance between allocating to tech and non-tech sectors of the equity markets. This means sector rotation risk is not likely a big factor for such portfolios from day one of investing.” ~Freddy Lim, Co-founder & CIO StashAway

We at MyPF wish both StashAway and investors the best in their continued journey, which we are sure has many more new milestones ahead. We also look forward to seeing StashAway work closely with licensed financial planners to offer great investment advice for clients in their best interest.

 

Why Is This Achievement Important for Investors?

  1. It is a sign that a digital wealth manager is growing healthily.
  2. It shows a key goal is in growing investors AUM which comes from both new investments and also growing existing AUM.
  3. There’s focus on the core wealth management product instead of trying to find other ways and means to make money (e.g. if they were unable to cover operations costs or facing investor outflow of funds (which indirectly increasing risk of insolvency or fraud).

 

Get StashAway

If you are yet to be using StashAway, enjoy a generous promotional code with 100% off StashAway’s fees for your first RM100,000 invested!

Get StashAway x MyPF Signup Promo

Pssst. We also have a StashAway Singapore Signup Promo (50% off up to SGD50k) for folks who want to invest in SGD

 

 

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