✅ StashAway Launches In Hong Kong

We start today with the announcement that StashAway is launching in Hong Kong. StashAway was founded in 2016 in Singapore and has since become Asia’s fastest-growing digital wealth manager. They have clients from over 160 countries with more than $1B US dollars in assets under management. And now the platform is licensed by the SFC and will be available to Hong Kong residents. StashAway offers low-cost and easy-to-use investing and asset allocation services for both retail and professional investors. The platform has a user-centric design, free educational resources, and a sophisticated investment framework.

StashAway combines these elements into a product that makes it easy for anyone to start investing. The platform will also be offering client support through its mobile and web app 7 days a week. Freddy Lim is StashAway’s Co-Founder and CIO. He says that StashAway’s framework allows people to invest a portion of their savings in a safe way. The platform is managing risk and returns by investing in large, liquid, and globally diversified ETFs. And StashAway works continually to optimize its portfolios to ensure that they remain resilient in any economic environment. Lim says that this approach means that anyone can invest safely over the long term, withdraw any time, and effectively plan for their future. And so far, the results are promising: StashAway’s portfolios have consistently outperformed their same-risk benchmarks since 2017. Annualized returns are ranging from 21.3 percent for its highest-risk portfolios to 4.7 percent for its lowest-risk portfolio as of February.

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✅ Digital Financial Services In India: What Does Access Mean For Residents?

Our second article today takes us to India, where writer Saurav Basu highlights the changes brought on by the Fintech revolution. Basu argues that ongoing digital transformations have made financial services more inclusive in the country. For one thing, even in a land as large and diverse as India, wealth managers are now available to almost everyone. Mobile applications are available to those in giant cities – as well as those living in the most remote locations. And in a land with 22 official languages and a population of over one billion people, going digital broke down language barriers as well.

Introducing digital services in the country’s native languages opened up new possibilities for residents that were previously restricted by a lack of English. Basu also points out what artificial intelligence and machine learning have done to boost the inclusivity offered by digital wealth tech. Digital wealth managers are now equipped with sophisticated technology that helps reduce errors and build investor faith. During the pandemic last year, over 400 million people in India used the internet for the first time in their lives. And the expansion of digital wealth technology in the land is helping more and more of them to take control of their financial future.

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✅ Wealth Management Platform Market Report: What Can We Expect?

And finally today we are going to take a look at a few highlights from a Wealth Management Platform Market report. The report from Mordor Intelligence focuses on Growth, Trends, and Forecasts for the five-year period from 2020 to 2025. During that time, the Wealth Management Platform market is expected to register a compound annual growth rate of 14.37 percent. Offerings are expected to increase as wealth management platforms attempt to support a broad set of digital channels, from smartphones to tablets. And awareness is growing when it comes to the importance of supporting these cross-channel experiences and reducing friction for customers. Many trading and investment firms are lowering or eliminating their fees and grappling with decreasing margins.

Digitizing operations is necessary for these firms as they work to find every opportunity to increase efficiencies. Business priorities in the market are becoming increasingly customer-centric and focused on streamlining the onboarding process. To that end, many platforms are integrating AI components, machine learning, and natural language processing. These elements help digitize processes and automation while reducing exceptions and human errors, making the onboarding process paperless and easy. Other key focus areas in the market include goal-based financial planning and secure, real-time collaboration between clients and their financial advisors. And the report makes special note of the North American region and its new generation of investors. These are investors whose expectations and preferences have been shaped by new technologies and the last financial crisis. And the demands of these investors are driving new service standards within the industry.