StashAway, Southeast Asia’s largest and fastest-growing digital wealth manager for both retail and sophisticated investors, has grown its assets under management (AUM) to more than USD1 billion.
The Singapore-based digital wealth management platform, is the first digital wealth manager in Southeast Asia, Middle East and North Africa regions to manage that amount of AUM.
One of the keys to attracting so much in assets has been StashAway’s ability to generate such strong returns even through two market corrections in 2018 and a market crash in 2020.
Since it launched in July 2017, its portfolios generated annualised returns ranging from 16.3% (for its highest risk portfolio) to 3.5% (for its lowest-risk portfolio). In 2020 alone, the portfolio returns ranged from 22.8% to 3.9% for those same portfolios, and consistently outperform their same-risk benchmarks.
“When the company was founded, our objective was to significantly improve the way people build their wealth, said Michele Ferrario, Co-founder and CEO of StashAway.
“For those who do invest their savings, traditional investment options just weren’t acceptable. But we knew that in the bank is actually our biggest competitor: in Asia, 46% of financial wealth is held in bank deposits, compared to 14% in North America. That’s why we’ve always focused not only on sophisticated investment principles and a great customer experience, but also financial education 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,” Ferrario added.
The World Economic Forum recognised StashAway in 2020 as a Technology Pioneer for developing cutting edge technology and “contributing greatly to improving the state of the world.”
According to Wai Ken Wong, Country Manager of StashAway in Malaysia, reaching this USD1 billion milestone in less than 4 years is only one of the many signs they 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 in Singapore, Malaysia, and MENA,” he added.
StashAway has a total paid-up capital of USD36.6million (MYR153.8 million). Since raising its Series C in August 2020, the Company has launched StashAway Workplace, a corporate financial benefits solution, and launched its services in the MENA region, out of its Dubai office.