I was browsing around and saw that Smartly had a limited time offer on management fees as well!

Hi Caleb, you are spot on that we are on track in releasing our comprehensive planning platform as well as investing via SRS very soon! Other than that, be assured that there are a couple of other new features in the works regarding our investment platform to serve our clients better. Regarding your other question on new funds, we have an internal investment committee that researches regularly on possible new funds to add to our portfolios. Ultimately, any new funds has to be aligned to our investment philosophy and value add to the portfolios we provide in terms of risk, returns and exposure. As mentioned in the reply to your review of MoneyOwl , do send any feedback or ideas that you have to me at [email protected] ! Stay tuned to the upcoming new releases! ;)

Hi Anonymous, thanks for the question. I'm from MoneyOwl and we use Dimensional funds in our portfolio construction. Dimensional Fund Advisors is a global investment manager dedicated to implementing the great ideas in finance. Guided by a firm belief in markets, the firm builds and manages strategies to help investors pursue higher expected returns. An enduring philosophy, strong client commitment, and deep working relationships with leading financial academics underpin Dimensional’s approach and form the foundation for new strategies. Through the research of Eugene Fama and Ken French, along with those of other leading academics, Dimensional has concluded that there are observable and persistent premiums to be found in certain dimensions of return, which can be harvested to give above market returns over the long term. For equities, these premiums are in small caps, value and profitability. For fixed income, they are in term and credit. For more information, you can refer to: https://advice.moneyowl.com.sg/the-right-building-blocks/

Hi Anonymous, It’s great that you are seeking answers so don’t feel sorry about it. I am from MoneyOwl and I’ll be glad to address your questions. First off, MoneyOwl isn’t just a robo-advisor, we’re a bionic financial adviser that can look into all your financial planning needs across budgeting, insurance, investment, estate planning while incorporating national schemes such as CPF into our planning framework. As for our investment ideology, fundamentally we believe that markets are efficient hence there is little incremental value in trying to find mispriced stocks and/or time the market. The data speaks for itself. Many active fund managers, i.e. those who seek to find mispricing in the market and trade on those information, have not been able to consistently outperform their benchmarks. But don’t just hear it from us. Check out the latest SPIVA report to determine this yourself. So we don’t pick stocks since we trust the market. So how do we help our clients? - Broad Diversification - We do this by designing portfolios that will help them get the average market returns (about 7% p.a.) over the long term which for most purposes enables them to meet their goals. This is also why our portfolios are very broadly diversified across countries and sectors so that we don’t miss out on potential upturns in any year, and also lowers our country, sector or company-specific risks. In our equity portfolios, we have exposure to both developed and emerging markets across the globe and for bonds, we invest in global bonds hedged to SGD with the main purpose of reducing the volatility in our investments. Under Dimensional’s funds, our portfolios have exposure to more than 8,000 equities and 200 bonds. - Low costs – We focus on the one thing that we can control – investment costs because it will certainly erode your returns especially in the long run. Our total fees ranges around 1.14% - 1.2% p.a. which is comparatively lower than many of the actively managed funds since paying more hasn’t proven to deliver better results. However, we don’t aim to have the lowest cost and I’m sure you can find other providers that can beat us, or better still if you can invest DIY. Dimensional strictly isn’t passive investing either because they do try and improve returns by tilting towards securities that are small caps, value and profitable which have shown to offer premiums in returns persistently, and they do this by trading very efficiently so that it minimises cost to the investor. - Staying Invested – The last and perhaps most important factor to successful investing is you, specifically your ability to stay invested to reap the market returns regardless of all the noise you hear out there. This is why we believe in the importance of having an adviser or risk coach who ensures that your need, ability and willingness to take risk is aligned to the portfolio you are investing in throughout your life stages. This requires an understanding of your goals, your financial situation both now and in future as well as your attitudes towards money. Many of these things require the human touch and may not be easily replicated through technology at the moment. Dimensional understands this well too, hence their funds can only be distributed through financial advisers. Find out more about our investment ideology - https://advice.moneyowl.com.sg/the-right-way-to-invest/ On your second question about whether Dimensional Fund is a unit trust, it is. As to why we chose a unit trust structure instead of an ETF, this is because as a social enterprise, MoneyOwl seeks to provide solutions for the man in the street so that they can start investing from as little as $50 per month. For those of us who are just starting to build our wealth, a regular savings plan (RSPs) is the most disciplined way for us to do so without having to wait till we amass a lump sum. For this reason, while ETFs listed on overseas exchanges were considered, they are not suitable for small investments as the amount invested might not be enough to buy whole shares and investors would end up either with fractional shares, or not be fully invested. We are not comfortable with fractional shares of ETFs as legal ownership is not clear. There is no such problem with unit trusts/ funds. There are a few additional issues of withholding/estate taxes, bid-ask spreads, forex spreads etc. esp for US-listed ETFs which you can read on in this article https://advice.moneyowl.com.sg/why-unit-trusts-and-not-etf/.

Hi Maxwell, Yinghua is right that currently, MoneyOwl only caters for one portfolio for each user. However, we are already in the midst of coming up with a multiple portfolio feature. Stay tuned! :)

Based off your timeline, it seems you are aiming to purchase your house at age 40+. In reality you probably will require this capital much earlier. There may also be other current and future financial commitments such as study loans, marriage. It would be good to start off with a systematic way to budget your expenses, save an emergency fund, and then invest with the surplus. Most people use their CPF savings to pay for their property purchases (public or private) in SG. Perhaps at 20, you should also be looking to build up your human capital (increasing your income). Unless you have other financial resources such as inheritance, income will be your most important financial asset. Without a regular stream of income, you have nothing to invest with. It is definitely heartening to see one start as early as you. As rightly pointed out by Siow Nan, DCA will be a more assessible way to invest for the young and just starting out. MoneyOwl offers $50/monthly investment amount to get started. There is no guarantee in investment returns. CPF interest rates are almost risk free. As a rule of thumb riskier assets generate higher returns but it's not the only factor to consider in investing. High risk tolerance therefore, should not be the only consideration in investing as well. MoneyOwl's robo will align your need, ability and willingness to take risk before recommending a suitable portfolio. Being bionic, there is also a team of client advisers on hand to answer the who, what, when, where, and hows of your investment.

You can contact a financial advisor who has access to DFA.

Dear Anonymous Thank you for the question and thank you Tat Tian for helping to answer as well. Just to give a bit of background, in 2014, Providend started DIYInsurance, Singapore’s first insurance comparison site. 1-2 years later, Finally.sg from Rayalliance (a financial advisory firm and not a general insurance company) started a similar site with almost the same model. The difference was that while all advisers at DIYInsurance was salaried to prevent conflict of interest, Rayalliance advisers are commission-based. In 2018, Providend and NTUC Enterprise went into a JV to form MoneyOwl and DIYInsurance was absorbed by MoneyOwl. Today’s MoneyOwl is the 10th social enterprise of NTUC Enterprise. We are not a cooperative. Moneyowl do not just offer insurance advisory service, but since Nov 2018, we have launch an online will writing service and most recently, an investment advisory service using both tech and human wisdom. In a few months time, we will be launching our comprehensive financial planning bionic advisory service. With that, I will say that the key differences between Finally.sg and MoneyOwl are: 1. Corporate Parentage and service offerings As mentioned, MoneyOwl is a JV between NTUC Enterprise and Providend. Both are local home grown companies with decades of experience doing good, doing well and doing right for Singaporeans. NTUC is a trusted brand among Singaporeans and Providend is one of the earliest financial advisory firms since 2001. It is well known for its deep expertise in financial advice as well as being a champion for conflict-free and ethical advice. MoneyOwl is a licensed financial adviser as well as fund management company. MoneyOwl is a bionic financial advisory company offering insurance, will writing service, and most recently, our investment advisory service via tech and human advisers. Finally.sg is a insurance portal belonging to Rayalliance, licensed financial adviser. Finally.sg is not a corporate entity. 1. Salaried advisers At MoneyOwl, we take the giving of conflict-free advice very seriously. At such, all our advisers are salaried based and do not take commissions. This is to ensure that our clients are assured that whatever advice given is purely for their good. Finally.sg is part of Rayallsince and their advisers are commission based. 1. Safe and Secure Platform At MoneyOwl, we are very serious in ensuring that we provide a safe and secure platform for you to receive advice. This is why MoneyOwl is ISO27001 certified. These are just some of the difference between MoneyOwl and Finally.sg. Hope this clarifies.

Hi Caleb, thanks for your questions. This is Chris, CEO Providend and Executive Director of MoneyOwl As our investment philosophy is one where we do not believe in market timing and also we believe in the use of low cost instruments, we will only bring in funds who meet these criteria. Unfortunately, there aren't many of such funds in Singapore as most financial advisers in Singapore do not want to "sell" these funds as they cannot get a trailer commission from them. As such, not many fund managers want to bring their low cost funds into Singapore as there is no demand from the advisory industry. But we will continue to be on the lookout for such funds and will do our best to persuade them to bring these funds in for Singaporeans. With regard to tiered-pricing, we hv not yet arrive at a decision. This is because we have conceived our services as a mass market service and it is this group of Singaporeans whom we really want to help. Also, our margins are already very thin. As much as we want to be cost efficient for our clients, we also need to price it at a level that is sustainable for us so that we can journey with clients for the long term. Having said that, we are not closed to the idea of tiered-pricing but the investment amount has to be a significant quantum before we can do so. For SRS, while the funds from Dimensional are already SRS approved, we are working hard with our platform (iFAST Financial) to bring it to our clients. We are looking at Q4 but hopefully earlier. We will definitely keep you and our followers on FB informed once we have it. Hope this clarifies!

Hi, I’m Dennis Hoe, Advisory Team Lead at MoneyOwl. Thank you for your question. As the other respondents have highlighted below, there is a correlation between return and risk. Risk is often proxied by volatility, though in a sense it is only one aspect of risk. The difference between a low-risk and high-risk portfolio typically lies in the asset allocation between equities and bonds, as equities have higher volatility than bonds. A low-risk portfolio generally has higher allocation into fixed income/bonds. If the bonds are of investment-grade, the returns are generally stable and is less volatile. However, the long-term returns are lower, as compared to investing into equities. A high-risk portfolio typically has more allocation in equities. Historically, equities have always been the driver for returns as stock market goes up in the long term due to growth in global demand. In a study of the US market between July 1926 to December 2017 done by Dimensional Fund Advisors, we see that in any 10-year period, out of 991 overlapping periods, equities beat Treasury bills (short-dated government bonds generally regarded as risk-free) 85% of the time. A well-diversified portfolio of equities is better positioned to gain higher return in the long term but it is more volatile (higher fluctuations). That said, while we all know that equities go up in the long term, it is important to be invested in a portfolio that suits your risk appetite in which you can stay invested comfortably throughout the fluctuations during your investment period. Because the worst thing that you can do is get out too early when the market plunges as a result of not being able to handle the volatility emotionally and miss out on capturing market returns. If so, it might be better for you to have some bonds in your portfolio to dampen volatility but stay invested to reap the long-term return of that asset allocation. To determine which type of portfolio is suitable for you, our advice is structured around these 3 factors: 1) Need to take risk – What are you investing for? Are your current resources enough to meet the goal? The higher your goal relative to your resources, the higher the need for return. 2) Ability to take risk – Your financial situation. Do you already have your emergency funds in place? How long of an investment period do you have to reach your goal? The longer the investment period, the more capacity. For a pure equity portfolio, MoneyOwl recommends 15 years to have a high degree of certainty of having no negative annualised returns, based on historical observations over the long term. If “tail events” are excluded, this 15-year time frame reduces to about 10 years. However, the caveat always is that historical returns are not a guarantee of future returns. 3) Willingness to take risk – What is your likely reaction to the fluctuation of your investment return? Will you sell off your investment when the value drops in event of market downturn? This is your tolerance for short-term losses and fluctuations. At MoneyOwl, we believe that successful investing is not about maximising returns. Rather, we emphasise sufficiency of returns and the reliability of those returns. As mentioned, volatility is only one perspective of risk. From a financial planning standpoint, not being able to meet the return you need to live the life you want, or having your purchasing power eroded by inflation, are also risks. Thus, successful investing for individuals is really about getting the highest probability of getting sufficient returns, with as little guesswork and as little as stress possible, that will meet your goals such as financial independence. Having the right asset allocation for market-based returns, keeping costs low and very importantly, staying invested for the long term are the keys to a successful investing experience. Hope this helps – and if you would like to speak with someone, please feel free to contact us at [email protected](mailto:[email protected]). As we are a Bionic Financial Adviser rather than a pure robo, my team of client advisers will be most happy to have a discussion with you about your risk profile.