Or you could look at the other side of coin, SA needs the almost annual fund injections just to keep the doors open and the lights on. Smartly was backed by a decently sized asset management firm. They had a lot of smart people look over the accounts and the numbers and decided it wasn't worth it. It's even worse if you consider Deloitte's estimates that it would 5 to 10 years just for a robo-advisor to break even, let alone make a profit. It's a lot worse when you consider Smartly's parting statement that the robo market had intense competition and was overcrowded, which is hilarious when less than a year later, the biggest regional robo and their main rival barely has over a $1b AUM.

noted on ur point, so what are u proposing?

Like I mentioned, SA came in at the right time and got the right people doing the marketing+funding Pandemic only spurred further interest in the concept of AI and doing things via phone to most investors with deep pockets. Malaysia and Singapore society are both very conservative in general especially when it comes to finance and wealth management. Majority of the big money movers are more likely to invest in mutual funds, real estate, or shares. SA's target market are mostly Millenial generation who can't yet provide the high amounts of investment the way that older people can, unless they're the lucky few with rich inheritance or have made a successful business early.

Whether they'll be able to succeed and survive is still up in the air, and hopefully other people who use them as an investment platform knows that. Even studying banking history or recent fintech companies like e-pay/e-wallets etc., it takes years before can see if a company makes enough to survive, much less profit to the startup investors. Eventually market will start to consolidate and mergers/takeovers will happen etc.

Four years is really too early to predict or decide if something as new as robo-advisors in the ASEAN region is going to do well or not.

This post has been edited by DragonReine: Feb 20 2021, 01:12 AM

Just wait and when they can accelerate funding access by using wallets which looks like coming soon by q3 pending SC and BNM approval

Coupled with their MENA market access most likely AUM 2billion in next 2 years is highly likely

I see u mention AI there, just want to see what u meant by that in the context of SA. What i know SA is automation and keeping exposure to within range of target allocation for each ETF automatically.

What i know the ETF they chose also require human intervention or decision. Correct me if i am wrong. I just dont see how AI has anything to do with SA.

Automation is the key word here.

When something is automated, it's a form of AI. Still a crude form of it, but AI nonetheless. It becomes AI when it's able to "learn" from data it picks up, automatically adjusting its actions based on data.

Robo-advisors collect information from clients online, and then use this data to provide financial advice or invest client assets with moderate to minimal human intervention. Using AI, they work based on mathematical rules or algorithms.

StashAway's ERAA is a programme that analyzes data and makes decisions based on parameters keyed in by SA's analysts and investment team, where after receiving instructions it then operates without human intervention (mostly), continuously analyzing and observing market conditions to make decisions based on the data collected and the market movements. The buying and selling of your units whenever a transaction happens on the robo-advisor is done by the ERAA.

Part of why robo-advisor companies claim to keep costs low is how AI goes the grunt work of going to market to buy and sell, so they don't have to hire humans to do that for the company.

This post has been edited by DragonReine: Feb 20 2021, 09:59 AM

What I know SA is doing automation not AI but whatever though it doesnt matter to me. I know some people usr AI to upsell their product, but dont kid ourselves that if A is greater than X% and proceed to sell because of that as a form of AI, it is just a trigger. My excel is automated, some of my light at home is automated but they dont make any decision.

That ERAA thing is nice as a way to upsell their product as well. Again it is just automation of set trigger based on range allowed(percentage wise) for that asset.


Remember in the end it is just investing in passive ETF where decision is taken on a broad perspective of a sector or country or region rather than a specific company which is much more trickier to get right in the long term.

This post has been edited by backspace66: Feb 20 2021, 11:19 AM

Fair enough.

Nice to bring it up sometimes, think many people would already know this though.
The AI is marketing as you said. But many people use the platform for a convenient way of investing in etfs. And the convenience of multiple portfolios to choose from.
Never seen anyone so far who was impressed by its "AI" and decided to use the platform because of it.
More on the etfs and what are the holdings in the etf.

Well i guess we never know, but we see some of the question being asked over here, i wonder what is their level of understanding in investment or even experience on them. So never say never.

As you said, really do wonder how much some people understand here based on the questions asked even after clear answers have been given.

Which is why it's nice to bring up some topics up for discussion again from time to time.

Yeah it's really a game of volume and numbers at that kind of fee structure and to get there they need to burn lots of VC funds. I don't know the specifics of SA's operations, but their CEO is ex-Rocket/Zalora - and when Zalora started up they hired lots of management consultants - eager, talented, and expensive.

There is only 1 direct mention of AI in the entire StashAway site.

I think we just somehow deduced "robo" to "artificial intelligence". The actual robo part of stashaway is just when you create goals. The portfolios of different risk levels, I believe they are all manual works done by the portfolio manager or CIO.

Don’t forget the most important buy and sell order it is trigger by ERAA philosophy being feed into their AI to determine buy and sell price based on the risk assessment calculation

Just wondering what platform they are using as Wahed is running on AWS but stillness a lot manual grunt work going as the processes are slow on that platform

Anyone knows when they execute buy order during the period of market open? Is it exactly when the market opened, or when it was the lowest, or any specific time set?

This post has been edited by stormseeker92: Feb 20 2021, 10:29 PM

1stly it depends on when you deposit is being processed and accepted

2nd buy order will only happen within the next day or 2 and it depends on ERAA robo calculated the buy price based on your deposits and allocated risks to it

So there is no specific time only based on buy order price being triggered by the market price and hence it’s become your assets just like typical ETFs or share price on the market being bought as there is no Waybuloo you can control price movements unless you’re the big whale or market movers

Out of curiosity, I checked a few of the last transactions. The buy price correspond quite well to 11.30am price in yahoo finance of the buy date.

Now what day it will buy is still a mystery, because it really depends on a chain of transactions for example jompay, direct debit or Simple (the longest chain).

Could be 1 day or even 4 days if you encounter weekends + holiday hiccups

Yea. I've been checking each time a buy order is completed (to ensure buy price is between the day's high and low) and so far the buying time has always been between 1130 and 1230 for me

Just made my virgin transfer to SA. HAHA!

Your Virgin buy will be happening on Wed