We got swamped with work, personal and baby stuff. But we are still here and surviving. So that has to count for something. Anyway, this post is a rant about our love/hate relationship with DBS. While we use DBS banking products extensively, they continue to annoy us with the little things.

Like signing up for the DBS BYOB Promotion and SAYE Account back in Aug 2017. It gave us the highest interest we have ever earned on any bank account. But the number of hoops we had to jump through to get it was ridiculous.

Another thing was my wife’s salary crediting bank account that got converted into the useless DBS Multi-Currency Account instead of the more useful DBS Multiplier Account. And she still ended up having to make a trip to the branch to do the conversion.

Anyway, the newest thing to annoy us is the DBS DigiPortfolio. When we read the articles and blog posts online, they had mostly positive reviews of it. Even though we read the introduction to the DBS DigiPortfolio on its webpage, we made the mistake of not reading the FAQs.

As banking employees, that is a dumb ass mistake. Because we know how important FAQs are and those can sometimes be used to hide important information about the banking product. Meaning the bank has disclosed the fact but just that it’s not immediately obvious to the customer.

We thought, let’s set up both the Asia Portfolio (with S$1,000) and Global Portfolio (with US$1,000) using my wife’s DBS account. After all, only she has the multi-currency account (DBS Multiplier Account) to do this. While the setting up process was easy and the interface was user-friendly, these are the 2 main problems we have with the DBS DigiPortfolio.

1. The feature of setting up a regular savings plan is not available yet.

What in the world?! Nobody thought it was a good idea to flag this issue out extensively!? The whole point of robo-investing for us is so my wife can dollar-cost average by using a regular savings plan. That is how she can increase her robo-investments without monitoring the markets and having to do it herself. She does not enjoy watching the market and doing any form of manual investments.

By not having this feature, it becomes like a lump sum investment at a point in time. If she wants to increase our investment in the DBS DigiPortfolio, she has to close it and open another one. Isn’t that like selling her robo-investments and buying more robo-investments manually? Makes no sense when it’s supposed to be fuss-free investing. Might as well make the investments manually yourself with the ETFs. Speaking of which.

2. It was difficult identifying the ETFs in the portfolios

We understand the position taken not to disclose the ETFs in the DBS Asia and Global DigiPortfolios upfront in the introduction and FAQs webpage. After my wife opened both portfolios, she could see the name of the ETFs in them. But there was barely any information on them.

Where are the stock symbols on the stock exchanges? No introduction to what these ETFs holdings are. Are there dividends/distributions and what is the frequency like? Do some of these ETFs have no dividends/distributions themselves and are on a reinvestment basis? Does it even matter since the DBS DigiPortfolios reinvest any dividends/distributions?

So many questions and so little answers. I was trying to track the ETFs purchased in my wife’s DBS Asia and Global DigiPortfolios using StocksCafe. Took me a long time to identify the relevant UK-listed ETFs in the Global Portfolio. And there was that 1 Singapore-listed ETF in the Asia Portfolio that was not easy to find as well. It would be nice for DBS to provide more information on these ETFs to the customers that actually set up the portfolios.

I’m going to tag this post under Robo-Advisor. It’s technically not accurate but this is still a form of robo-investing. Fancy words for what’s essentially the same thing. DBS as the service provider is paid a fee based off my wife’ AUM in the DigiPortfolio to manage her robo-investments.

If she can’t set up a regular savings plan, what is the point of charging that fee if you can’t invest the contributions she wants to make? Is DBS charging a fee for just making the initial investments in setting up the DigiPortfolio, rebalancing and reinvesting any dividends/distributions? You aren’t even doing much in between those activities.

And why should my wife pay DBS for research done on ETFs as part of the fee charged? There’s barely any information on them that my wife can read about. Think about this and improve your service DBS. This message goes out to all robo-advisors in Singapore. Keep improving and be relentless in your drive to serve the customers whose investments you manage at a fee in the best way possible.

Well, sleeping through the night for my wife might be short-lived with the baby’s milk consumption going up to 80 ml per feed. Solely using the Haakaa Manual Pump to express and store the milk in the fridge during the day is no longer sufficient for overnight feeding. She has to start utilising the Spectra Electric Pump now to increase the supply of stored milk in the fridge.

My wife will also have to sleep later and wake up earlier to get more feeds in and increase the supply of stored milk in the fridge. However, we are going to try and ensure she gets at least 6 to 7 hours of continuous sleep every night at least for these few months when she needs it most. Intermittent sleep and consequently insufficient rest are going to affect her recovery. Something we need to continue being mindful of as the baby caregiving demands increase.

We are also aware things are going to keep changing. The confinement nanny will eventually leave in Jan 2020 with the helper coming in then. While we expect the helper to learn from the confinement nanny, we should be taking over most of the baby caregiving responsibilities. Even if my wife could do the overnight feedings for those few months, what would happen if she goes back to work in Apr 2020. Who should care for the baby in the day after that if we are both working? Our parents with helpers or infant care at day care centre?

Interesting questions and challenges that surface for us to consider as the baby just turned 3 weeks old today. While my wife is focused on her immediate responsibilities and short term issues, I’m more focused on the mid to long term issues we will have to address. She has an execution style of thinking while I have a strategic style of thinking. This has worked for us as a couple when we face problems together to try and solve them.

Anyway, back to the topic of investments since it’s good to mix up the stuff I write about in my posts. My wife has received her $300 deposit back from Smartly. Even though we understand they are going through a platform update, the entire process has not been managed well. Especially the customer engagement part whereby we should have been informed of such a major change to the platform that it actually affects Smartly’s ability to invest our deposits funding.

However, we have decided to stick with Smartly for now. It’s about going through good and bad times together as service provider and customer. We want to see how the upgraded platform looks and feels like. After all, Smartly still provides a robo advisory service that we appreciate and we were one of their earliest customers. Talk about customer loyalty. Hopefully Smartly deserves it and goes on a path of service improvement from now on. We will continue to provide updates here on Smartly to keep them accountable.

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.