Investing Through A Social Enterprise: Why MoneyOwl Comes with an Important Social Mission And How They Want To Help Singaporeans Through The COVID-19 Pandemic

Social enterprises are businesses that are positioned up to promote social good for the community that they serve. Unlike regular businesses that tend to focus on profits, social enterprises focus on serving the social, economic and cultural needs of the people that they work with.

In Singapore, we have a tendency to think of social enterprises as companies established to help marginalised groups or to support specific causes like sustainability. Rarely do we think of social enterprises as firms that want to help us achieve your own goals to live better lives to live in and our families. However these social enterprises do exist.

One such social enterprise in Singapore is MoneyOwl. A joint venture between NTUC Enterprise and Providend, MoneyOwl's social mission would be to help Singapore families make the best financial decisions to ensure that everyone can live happily, retire well and revel in good peace of mind.

To meet this mission, MoneyOwl provides a suite of holistic services to assist its clients, centering around these five areas: Investing; Insurance; Cash Savings; Wills and Financial Planning.

Making Investments Accessible & Affordable For The Masses

For its investment service, MoneyOwl helps construct the right portfolios to help investors get optimal returns based on the investment risk level that they're willing (and able) to consider. MoneyOwl does regular reviews and rebalancing of portfolios so that clients can take a hands-off method for their investment portfolio.

MoneyOwl utilizes a bionic approach towards financial advisory. This means on top of using technology to support its investment advisory work, MoneyOwl has a team of fully-salaried advisers (not paid any commissions) who provide face-to-face consultations to ensure that any questions or clarifications can be told its clients.

Besides giving you use of quality investment portfolios, one of the ways MoneyOwl ensures it achieves its social pursuit to make investment affordable for the masses is by allowing clients to invest from as little as $50 per month and/or to create lump sum investments from just $100.

MoneyOwl Is Lowering Their Investment Advisory Fees To aid Singaporeans Through The COVID-19 Pandemic & Recession

In addition, included in its social mission to support Singapore investors, particularly during this challenging COVID-19 pandemic and recession period, MoneyOwl is going to be lowering its investment advisory fee.

From now to 31 December 2021, the first $10,000 of investments in clients' portfolio may have its advisory fee reduced to 0%.

In addition, investment advisory fee is going to be permanently reduced from 0.65% p.a. to 0.60% p.a. for investment amounts between $10,000.01 to $100,000. For investment amounts above $100,000, the fees will be reduced from 0.65% p.a. to 0.50% p.a.

On top of that, MoneyOwl will also be absorbing the present platform fee of 0.18% p.a. permanently.

This implies that investors will not be paying any fee (excluding the fund expenses of between 0.28% to 0.32% p.a.) for the first $10,000 they invest in.

Moving forward, investors that already have more than $10,000 in their investment portfolio will see a saving of between 0.23% p.a. (investment amount between $10,000.01 to $100,000) to 0.33% p.a. (investment amount above $100,000) in annual fees. This reduces even more what was already a very low investment advisory fee that MoneyOwl was previously charging.

This means an investor who has a portfolio of $10,000 will save $65 in advisory fee (0.65% X $10,000) along with a further $18 in platform fee (0.18% X $10,000) for any total of $83 for 2021.

For simple reference, this is how the new fee structure will work.

* Promotional rate applicable simply to cash investments from now till 31 December 2021. The 0% fee may be effected through a rebate.

# Applicable to both cash and SRS investments, according to total AUM across all portfolios excluding WiseSaver.

For more details and terms and conditions, please see FAQs.

You can find out more details about MoneyOwl's revised pricing here.

Supporting You In Personal Finance Decisions Beyond Investing

While investing is obviously an essential part of financial planning, it would be incorrect to think of MoneyOwl as simply a robo-advisory investment platform. Besides providing a managed investment portfolio, MoneyOwl also provides solutions for other areas of personal finance.

In light of latest uncertain times, it is much more important to start making sure that your family are taken care of. MoneyOwl has a unique Comprehensive Financial Planning Service, which supplies everything that you need to develop a personalised, cost-effective and fit-for-purpose financial plan that incorporates its proprietary CPF Analyzer that is able to project your CPF balances and CPF LIFE payout upon retirement according to your current contribution and usage. Usually worth S$535, it's now at a low introductory fee of S$99, to help you take the first step towards achieving your goals.

For insurance protection, MoneyOwl helps its clients to find the best insurance policies across different insurers in Singapore through its insurance comparison tool . The aim here is to 1) help clients figure out the coverage that they need; 2) provide clients with the right insurance policies to cover these insurance gaps; and 3) ensure that they get value-for-money policies to ensure that clients do not need to pay more than they need to. Similarly, MoneyOwl's client advisors can also be found to provide face-to-face advice to clients with a lot more questions or need more in-depth consultation.

To reduce the cost of insurance for its clients, MoneyOwl rebates 50% of the basic insurance commissions that it receives from insurers back to its clients.

MoneyOwl also provides will writing solutions. These will writing services can be done online and is comparable in scope as to the other companies that charge for this service. Best of all, the will writing service it offers is free, so clients don't need to pay anything for using this particular service.

MoneyOwl WiseSaver also provides savings solutions for individuals in Singapore, allowing them to earn a higher return on their savings when compared with leaving it in a checking account. This is handy, particularly amid the low-interest-rate environment that we're currently in.

The Social Enterprise Advantage For Clients

A social enterprise can't be effective if it doesn't offer its customers useful tools or services which are comparable, if not superior, to what is available in the market. Social enterprises are, in the end, business entities that need to be commercially viable.

At the same time frame, a social enterprise for example MoneyOwl is created to achieve its social mission, and not to maximise profits. This is why MoneyOwl operates in a uniquely different way compared to what we are used to from financial advisory firms and fund managers.

For example, even though many financial advisory firms and fund managers tend to lean towards affluent client, as such clients tend to be able to invest more leading to higher fees earned, MoneyOwl focuses on serving the masses and ensuring its services remain accessible and reasonable for all, even during difficult periods.

Besides decreasing the cost of investing, we understand that MoneyOwl will also be conducting a series of free financial resilience workshops aimed at equipping Singaporeans with the right tools and knowledge to manage their personal finance in this difficult period.

These workshops will focus on cashflow management and debt management, during which MoneyOwl's experienced financial literacy trainers will transfer knowledge and introduce tools and resources that may serve as handles to help participants build financial resilience during challenging times and prepare for the future.

More details about these talks is going to be available soon on the MoneyOwl website. But when you are interested to hear about it when the workshop details are announced, you are able to indicate your interest first by sending an email to [email protected]