Review of StashAway and Smartly Singapore so far

I reckon it’s a good time for me to do a quick review of our StashAway and Smartly Singapore robo-advisor accounts as well as the investing strategy with them so far. After all, it has been more than half a year since we started opening these accounts. We now have 1 x StashAway and 1x Smartly robo-advisor accounts each between my wife and I.

Account Balances and Returns

My wife’s robo-advisor accounts have higher balances since they were opened earlier and the monthly value of automatic funds transfers into her accounts is greater. Given the drop in equity markets and depreciation of US$, my wife’s robo-advisor accounts have small positive returns and mine have small negative returns.

Given that we have the highest risk profiles portfolios, it seems like Smartly has a slightly more aggressive ETFs allocations. I have noticed that the Smartly positive and negative returns tend to be a bit bigger than StashAway. However, the difference is negligible in the short run and it’s difficult to tell which investing approach is better. I guess we will find out over time.

Referral Programs and Improvements

Both referral programs (StashAway’s was introduced earlier) reward us with days of free management for the referrer and referee – StashAway is S$10,000 limit for 6 months and Smartly is S$10,000 limit for 90 days. Smartly has an additional incentive of rewarding the user with 7 days of free management monthly for setting up automatic funds transfers into the account. There are no limits on the number of referrals for now. Anything that helps to reduce our fees paid is a good thing and it will help to increase our returns.

StashAway has made more improvements to its user interface and it even has a mobile application. There is more detailed information breakdown and greater transparency. Conversely, Smartly has been slow to make improvements to its user interface and is in the process of developing a mobile application. The latter has insufficient breakdown of information such as transactions and dividends reinvestments. I hope both StashAway and Smartly continue to work on improving the user experience and interface.

Investing Lead Times

Currently, when an automatic or manual funds transfer hits the Smartly robo-advisor account, the cash gets invested by the next day i.e. when the US equity markets open that night. This is the same for the StashAway robo-advisor account. Previously, it took a few days (Smartly had a shorter lead time and StashAway had a longer lead time) for the cash to be invested.

This used to be an area of annoyance for me. Especially when it came to my manual funds transfers that I initiated when the equity markets corrected. If the lead time is too long, the cash can get invested in the rebound stage instead of the dip stage of the equity markets. I got caught badly by StashAway once when doing a manual funds transfer because of its longer lead time previously. Since then, both Smartly and StashAway have reduced their investing lead times to 1 day. Well done!

Engagement

All together, we have invested about S$8,000 into the StashAway and Smartly robo-advisor accounts so far. We intend to stay with both of them and support their development. StashAway has really stepped up to engage the community in various investing conversations but Smartly has been rather quiet so far. As a bank staff and retail customer, I think the average person is still not willing to invest with a robo-advisor. This could be due to a lack of awareness, lack of understanding or just not enough trust in a digital investment service.

Investing habits take time to change and the average person in Singapore already doesn’t invest much in stocks and bonds. He/she rather invest in property and insurance policies. StashAway and Smartly have the opportunity to be at the forefront of educating the public on digital investment services and changing their behavior. That’s how they can encourage more people to open accounts with them and reach higher levels of invested amounts that allow them to start lowering their fees. Be aggressive and gain market share before the competition increases further. By the way, keep sending those updates and newsletters to the users. Keep the topics and way of writing interesting and we will continue to read them!