MoneyOwl Shutting Down – Information You Might be Interested In

MoneyOwl decided to end their business. You can read more at this microsite.

There was a review with its major shareholder NTUC Enterprise Cooperative. The result of the review is that the business would not be commercially viable, and a decision was made to redeploy resources to other areas where NTUC Enterprise can deliver greater social impact.

I have a unique relationship with MoneyOwl.

• I am a customer with them. One of my term insurance policies is with them. My dad’s first will was done with them. I have a tiny portfolio with them, but you can consider I don’t have investments with them.
• I did sponsor posts for them since their DIYInsurance days and continue to do so during the MoneyOwl days.
• I worked for Providend, who used to hold a stake in MoneyOwl. They have since divested a year ago.

They attempt to serve the need for folks to have access to a baseline set of insurance and investments that are less tainted by economic bias. Unfortunately, as NTUC Enterprise said, it is not commercially viable enough.

I have my own thoughts on why things end up this way, but I don’t think I want to put it out publically.

The most important thing to do is to assure the friends and readers who place their trust in me when I suggested MoneyOwl be a suitable insurance and investment platform when they needed implementation.

Your portfolios and insurance will be okay.

They are safely custodized at IFAST and will still be custodized at IFAST. The investment portfolios and insurance will be transferred to IFAST Financial. IFAST is a Singapore-listed financial entity best known for its local FSMOne platform but the bulk of its business is through its B2B platform servicing financial institutions.

This means that you can continue to be invested and stay invested with the same fee structure. Like my friend, Bedokian said in our Telegram chat, this is a good example of seeing where the securities will go to after it is not continuing the business. The securities are ringfenced and /or held in custody by other entities.

This works out according to what we expected.

The strategic Dimensional portfolios remains well-balanced in their ability to capture the market risk, value, and profitability premiums.

If you wish to switch platforms, Endowus have portfolios that are pretty similar to MoneyOwl’s strategic portfolio. The body is not dead yet, and the vulture is here. You can read more of their offer at the reference section of this post.

But for the friends and readers, here are some information that you may want to zoom in on from the micro-site.

Timeline

MoneyOwl Will Transfer Its Fund Management and Advisory Business to IFAST Financial Pte Limited.

This means that all your investment holdings (Cash, SRS, and CPF investments) will be held in your existing custodian iFAST.

For insurance, the policy servicing will be transferred to iFAST as well.

Here are notable things regarding investments and insurance to take note, reference from the MoneyOwl microsite:

1. iFAST will reach out and provide clients with new login details and instructions on accessing your investment account via the iFAST platform.
2. You can still continue to make your investments. From now till 24 Oct, on MoneyOwl investment account and on iFAST thereafter. Before 25 Oct, your iFAST account will be read only.
3. There are no changes to the portfolios.
4. The portfolio and fees will remain available only to MoneyOwl clients transferred to IFAST. They are not available to other IFAST clients.
5. If you purchase other funds through iFAST, these will be subject to regular fees charged by IFAST.
6. If you have an existing iFAST Global Markets and iFAST Prestige accounts, you can eventually login to see your MoneyOwl portfolios with the existing credentials. But if you hold iFAST Central and FSMOne accounts, you will need to have a different set of login credentials to access your MoneyOwl portfolios.
7. There are no changes to the bank accounts used for buying and redeeming/withdrawing cash investments. For buy orders, clients will continue to transfer cash into the same iFAST Client Trust Account. For withdrawals for cash-funded portfolios on IFAST platforms, the proceeds from the sale will be deposited into the cash account. You can then perform a separate withdrawal from the cash account into the bank account.
8. You don’t need to re-register your SRS or CPF Investment Account numbers if you have already done so with MoneyOwl.
9. iFAST will continue to rebalance your portfolios.
10. You can eventually still do regular savings plan (RSP) transactions, but the date of execution will be switch from 15th of the month to 8th of the month. This means that when you transfer money will need to be changed.
11. Mobile users can use the Ifast Global MArkets mobile app on App Store, Play Store or Huawei AppGallery.
12. iFAST will offer Dimensional funds for CPF investing when available, but only to transferred MoneyOwl clients, at the current fees charged by MoneyOwl.
13. You can still sign up for an investment account with MoneyOwl till October 2, 2023.
14. Your insurance application processing will still be ongoing unless you decide to withdraw your application.

References

• MoneyOwl wind down notice.
• MoneyOwl closure: How to replicate or optimise your MoneyOwl portfolios through Endowus

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