Comparing RoboAdvisors Syfe StashAway MoneyOwl

People have been raving about these RoboAdvisors because the returns on these instruments are so much better than the pathetic interests that our local banks give us. And for the less savvy, risk-averse investors, these RoboAdvisors are a god-sent as the returns can range from 5-20% a year depending on the portfolio or the risk factor you have selected.

But which of these RoboAdvisors are the best? And let’s not use 2020 performance to gauge these Robo performances because 2020 is a year where even my grandmother will be profitable in whatever trades she made. It was right after a black swan event where Covid-19 had wrecked utter destruction to economies worldwide. So let’s look at the performance of some of these RoboAdvisors for the year 2021 and I and my friends have put in our money in these 3 RoboAdvisors (Syfe, StashAway and MoneyOwl) so you don’t have to risk your capital.

StashAway

Let’s look at StashAway first. Here’s their fee structure.

No min. investment required so you can start with a small capital. But should you even put your money in this? Let us show you our investment on a 10k SGD account that we started in May 2021 just for testing purposes.

So as you can see, on the highest Risk setting of 36%, the account is actually DOWN around 2.8% this year so you can see that such investments do have some risks and your capital is not guaranteed. You can always reduce the risk factor obviously, but the ROI just do not justify the fees and the opportunity costs that you are incurring by parking your funds in this portfolio.

I was analysing the breakdown of the asset class breakdown and just deep-diving into the assets that Stashaway has purchased on my behalf and I can see that they are quite heavy on China-Tech where nearly 17% of the portfolio is invested in China-Tech which could explain the loss since China-Tech has been hammered pretty badly this year.

Now, let’s compare StashAway with Syfe during the same period.

Syfe

Syfe is a little different where you cannot select your risk preference. Instead, they provide 4 different portfolios: Core, REIT+, Cash+ and Select.

REIT+ holds Singapore’s 20 largest REITS. Many people in Singapore loves investing in REITs due to the high dividends they can receive.

Syfe Core portfolios is a diverse portfolio where they will purchase a mixture of equities, bonds in the US and China market.

Cash+ is simply just a savings account with projected returns of 1.5% p.a. Not too shabby if you compare it against your Banks’ savings account.

Similarly, Syfe is licensed by MAS.

How’s the performance of Syfe where we also put 10k SGD during May just to compare it against StashAway.

So the portfolio chosen in this case is the Syfe Core. And you can see that the returns have been around 6% since May 2021, with a heavier weightage on Equities over Bonds which is exactly what we want since Bonds are just too low returns.

So with a capital of 10k, and taking out the stellar performance of last year, you can see that StashAway struggles while Syfe has a much better performance where most people would be satisfied with because it is doing so much better than just leaving their money in a savings account.

Another friend was using MoneyOwl this year and he shared the performance of this Robo-Advisor and although the time period was not the same as StashAway or Syfe, it is still interesting to just look at the types of investments they provide and how is the performance. He started both portfolios at the start of 2021 and here’s the performance of his portfolios.

MoneyOwl

MoneyOwl is interesting because they allow you to not only invest CASH but also your SRS (Supplementary Retirement Scheme) savings. This is AWESOME because you always want to max out your SRS for the year just to save on your income taxes AND also to grow this sum of money than just leaving it in your CPF SRS account where you don’t even gain any interest from it.

So every year, if you are a Singaporean citizen or PR, you can contribute $15,300 to your SRS account and if you are a foreigner, then you can contribute $35,700 annually. This will significantly bring down your income tax.

You can do your own investments with this money, but if you are not proficient, then MoneyOwl does provide a portfolio for your SRS investments.

You can see that from Feb 2021 until Nov 2021, you would have gained around 7% returns on your capital and that is not too shabby since it is practically hands-free. There is a group of people who would recommend that you invest your SRS in STI ETF but the dividends from that is approximately 4% annually so it is performing worse than MoneyOwl.

As for the main portfolio, on a capital of around 24k SGD, he has managed to gain 8.45% returns. Again, definitely better than leaving your money in the bank.

So, I hope with this mini comparison between some of the biggest Robo-Advisors in Singapore, you would have a better idea on which Robo-Advisor to put your money in.

If you feel that 8% ROI annually is too little, I completely concur with you and can introduce you to some of the riskier instruments for passive income.