Singapore, renowned for its forward-thinking and proactive approach, has once again demonstrated its commitment to maintaining a leading edge in the financial sector with the unveiling of the refreshed Financial Services Industry Transformation Map (ITM) 2025. A core focus of the revamped ITM 2025 will be to broaden the financial industry’s capabilities in several asset classes, including wealth management fintechs.
Spearheaded by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the original Financial Services ITM that launched in 2017 was a testament to Singapore’s dedication to marrying innovation with robust financial practices. Recognised as one of the 23 pivotal sectors by the Committee of the Future Economy, the focus then was on harnessing the power of technology and fostering a workforce that could operate at the intersection of finance and innovation.
The results of this initiative speak for themselves. Between 2016 to 2020, the financial services sector grew at an impressive average rate of 5.7% annually, surpassing its own ambitious target of 4.3%. Moreover, the job market in this sector flourished, with an average creation of 4,100 net jobs each year — again, outpacing the target.
Central to the 2025 refresh of the ITM is a collaborative effort with the financial industry to delve deeper into asset classes where Singapore can exert significant regional or global influence. The spotlight on wealth and asset management, along with the fintechs anchoring that space as well as others like Web 3.0, artificial intelligence and green fintech, is particularly noteworthy.
Not only is this alignment indicative of Singapore’s intent to solidify its place on the global financial stage, but it also underlines a commitment to its people, ensuring that Singaporeans are empowered with robust financial planning resources for the years ahead.
With the renewed Financial Services ITM 2025 offering a roadmap, here is a look at five prominent wealth management fintechs from Singapore that are gaining major attention for their financial planning and asset management capabilities.
Endowus
Endowus is the first wealthtech digital advisor in the Southeast Asia region that will span both private wealth and public pension savings in 2023. The firm’s proprietary systems provide data-driven wealth advice in constructing personalized solutions.
Its portfolios are built on access to institutional-quality financial products at the lowest cost possible. In 2023, Endowus said that it hopes to continue working with partners including the National Volunteer And Philanthropy Centre (NVPC) and Access Singapore to create more financial and social opportunities for individuals and organisations including animal welfare; children and youth; community integration; sports, as well as women and girls.
Moreover, Endowus will also be supporting women in their personal investing journeys by partnering with the Financial Women’s Association of Singapore (FWA) and United Women Singapore (UWS) to host financial literacy workshops tailored for females across ages and socio-economic backgrounds.
StashAway
StashAway is an online investment management company headquartered in Singapore. The company designs personalised portfolios and unique monthly investment plans based on a customer’s characteristics, and then manages this portfolio with advanced investment strategies.
StashAway was the first robo-advisor to obtain a full capital-markets services license (CMS) from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and expanded to Malaysia in November 2018, and then Thailand in 2021 with new products introduced.
Investing customers’ money in exchange traded funds (ETFs), the robo-advisor has reported strong year-on-year (YoY) assets under management (AUM) growth in consecutive years — recording more than 300% year-on-year (YoY) in 2020. StashAway has surpassed over US$ 1 billion (SG$ 1.35 billion) in AUM since their launch in 2017., reporting that its portfolios generated annualised returns ranging from 16.5% for its highest risk portfolio to 4.3% for its lowest-risk portfolio in that period.
Canopy
Canopy, formerly known as Mesitis, offers a personal financial data aggregation and visualisation platform, helping financial institutions and wealth managers connect their siloed data, analyse these data, and gain new insights into their business or market. A couple of years ago, Canopy was one of just three Singaporean wealth management fintechs to be included in the inaugural Fintech Global Wealthtech 100 list.
Canopy’s API solution sits on top of clients’ (ranging from family offices and private banks to trustees and self directed traders) existing infrastructure and enables financial data to be aggregated seamlessly across several databases and systems. With more than US$ 160 billion in AUM across 325 custodians, Canopy helps solve its clients’ data problems — from data acquisition to aggregation to analytics, visualisation, and reporting.
Bambu
Bambu is a leading global provider of digital wealth technology for businesses of every size and industry, from finance to commercial or even new disruptors, transforming the digital wealth market. Bambu enables businesses to make saving and investing more straightforward and intelligent for their clients.
The cloud-based platform is powered by proprietary algorithms and machine learning tools. With over 25 clients that are some of the biggest global financial institutions, there are in excess of 300,000 users across highly customisable platforms powered by Bambu robo-advisor solutions.
ADDX
With the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) exploring the feasibility of applications in asset and wealth management and its potential returns for Singaporeans’ long term financial wellbeing, one of the key fintechs in that space is ADDX. The company has worked with MAS on the Project Guardian Industry Group, comprising several financial institutions (FIs) which will lead industry pilots in asset and wealth management, fixed income, and foreign exchange.
The former iStox also launched its first cryptocurrency product with the listing of a digital asset fund by investment manager Trovio Capital Management, and issued a S$50 million sustainability-linked bond with UOB. Besides recognising cryptocurrency and tokenising other digital assets such as real estate in the US, ADDX allows investors to invest in fractions of private market opportunities like access to private equity, unicorns, hedge funds, private debt, and other alternative investments that are usually reserved for the ultra-affluent and institutions, starting from as low as US$5,000.
With numerous incumbent bank partnerships and alternative asset private market investment potential, ADDX has a strong track record of success, having raised over US$1 billion on its platform from more than 80 nationalities of investors.