On Thurs 14 Nov, my wife got an email from Smartly that they are undergoing some changes on their website and are halting new deposits. Hence, the deposit of $300 they received the day before could not be invested and had to be returned.
This was followed by an instruction for my wife to update her bank account details on Smartly’s website under “Transfer” tab for them to initiate the return of her deposit. She logged into her Smartly account and was surprised to find out she could not provide her bank account details there.
Subsequently, my wife sent an email to the Smartly support team and also reached out to them on the Instant Messenger intercom. This was 2 days ago and she still has not heard back from Smartly. The immediate question now is – what has happened to the $300 deposit?
We have been supporters of Smartly since it started out as the 1st robo-advisor in Singapore. But when things like that happen, it does make you re-evaluate whether they are deserving of the support and we also become more wary of them. This should be a learning experience for Smartly and for us as well.
A website revamp should be managed with the utmost care especially when you are dealing with customers’ investments. We want to know where our money is going to, especially if you cannot accept deposits. Most importantly, have your customer support team on standby to address our concerns if you know this is going to happen. Learn and improve.
I have encountered the same error message, though in my case I was able to successfully submit my bank account information. No indication yet when the deposit will be returned though. Worrying 🙁
I did receive my deposit back. I’m copying the message they sent me
We’re very sorry for not replying sooner to your earlier emails, due to high email volumes recently to our Smartly Customer Support amidst our recent unavoidable temporary suspension of our ability to accept deposits to our Smartly Platform. We wish to confirm that your $75 deposit of 6th November has been refunded to your OCBC Bank account on 14 November. Please note that we will be instituting additional measures to ensure this type of delay in our replies does not occur again.
We deeply apologise for the inconvenience caused to you in this matter and as a gesture of goodwill, we would like to offer you a 2 months free management fee applicable to all your existing investment Goals created, once we are able to resume acceptance of new deposits again. Should you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to let us know. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
Good to know you got your deposit back and the 2 months free management fee. My wife is in the process of getting her deposit back. And we are stopping all funds transfers or deposits into our Smartly accounts. It’s been a disappointing experience so far and I’m not sure we want to continue with Smartly after this.
Think you should have gotten your deposit back by now. My wife is in the process of getting her deposit back!
From a IT standpoint , website revamp is a front end activity , investing money already transferred is a backend task
Maybe Smartly is stopping both front end and back end activities since this could be a major change for them (not just a website revamp).
My biggest concern is that this is advertised as an upgrade. If it’s a security flaw that they have found, okay it makes sense to take down all services for this long (it’s been weeks and no news). But if it’s an UPGRADE, why would they take down the services when they’re not ready with the new release? It really doesn’t make sense to me, and they should be better at communicating this.
Anyway, have moved away from smartly because of this poor dev management. Stashaway seems much more fleshed out and I’m already quite happy with the UI.
That’s true. No idea why the deposit investment service would have to be taken down and the communication on this issue has been poor. Yup, StashAway is much better in terms of everything!
Just checking if you managed to get your full $300 deposit back yet? I topped up $150 on 15th Nov, yet to get mine back so far..
Yup, my wife just got her $300 deposit refund back. You can check with the Smartly support team whether they have processed your $150 deposit refund yet.
I had the same issue. I got my deposit back but it took longer than the 3 days they mentioned. As a precaution, I have withdrawn all my funds, as worried that this is either some kind of security flaw they have discovered or a sanction from MAS whereby they can’t accept new money. I will be putting it all into my StashAway account instead.
Understand your concern and I had the same issue as well. But I decided to keep my funds in Smartly as I want to see what the upgraded platform looks like!