An Update from Our CEO: 26 March 2020

Our CEO and co-founder, Michele Ferrario, shares a few updates about StashAway.

1. What we're doing to take care of our employees while carrying out day-to-day operations[0:22]
2. What we've done to prepare for the ever-changing industry landscape[1:20]
3. How we're helping clients navigate the current market conditions[2:42]

Full Transcript

My name is Michele Ferrario, and I'm the co-founder and CEO of StashAway. Over the last few weeks, COVID-19 has changed our lives in Singapore, in Malaysia, in Thailand, and everywhere else in the world. I've been discussing with a few people on how we've been coping with that at StashAway and I thought I might give a little bit more details in this video.

There are three areas that we looked at. First, on the health side, we have been working with a split team arrangement with some people working from home and some people working from the office from the very beginning of February. So it's been now close to two months.

As of today, most of our team members in Singapore are working from home. There is around 10% of people working from the office. Everybody has the freedom to choose if they're not part of a split team. In KL, all of our team members are working from home. In Bangkok, all of our team members are working from home.

As a customer, you probably have not noticed that we've been working from home for the last couple of months and that's because we have a completely digital set up. So, the reality is that we can work from it wherever, anywhere we want.

The only effect is, obviously, it's a bit less fun to work by yourself at home or in an empty office but hopefully, this COVID-19 period will pass and we'll go back to share our beautiful offices in Singapore, KL, and Bangkok.

Secondly, on the business side, if you spoke to me over the last two and a half years, you may have heard me saying that we wanted to build StashAway on very solid foundations. This is exactly the times for which we were preparing, to make sure that we have very, very solid foundations.

We have raised 27 million Singapore Dollars in equity funding so far to make sure we could navigate through any type of market period, any type of disruption and therefore we can confidently say that we will continue to grow. We will continue to invest. In fact, we're continuing to hire. And, if you're looking for a change in job and you want to join a dynamic tech-focused company like ours, do feel free to visit our careers page; you'll find the link at the bottom of our website.

In these difficult economic times, don't be surprised if some of the smaller players in our industry may decide to close down their business. This is normal. It happens in every industry that when the economy gets a bit rougher. There might be a consolidation wave. Thankfully on our side, we built the company on very solid foundations. We are able to build the leading player in the industry and we've leveraged 27 million Singapore Dollars in equity fundraising that we've done so far and we're back by very solid shareholders the likes of Fidelity's venture capital arm, Eight Roads.

Third, we spent a lot of effort in helping our customers navigate this very rocky markets over the last few weeks. You might have seen my co-founder Freddy, our Chief Investment Officer, speak several times, giving updates on the market and also write about the markets and you will be able to find all of that material in the StashAway app.

The short story is that nobody knows how is the journey going to be in the next month, 3 months, 6 months, 9 months.

But what we do know is what the destination is; and the destination is that over time, the markets would recover. So if you have a long term plan, you're saving for your retirement 10 years down the road, 15 years down the road. What happens in the markets in the next 3, 6 or 9 months doesn't really matter. You should stick to your plan. Continue to dollar cost average into the market and the investments you will have made during this period of time with the markets going a little bit down would actually reap some of the highest returns you will see in your retirement plan.

Thank you for watching this video. I hope I was able to explain how we thought about coping with COVID-19 here at StashAway and perhaps if you are a manager of a company or you are an entrepreneur yourself, hopefully, I gave you some ideas on how to think about it. If you have any specific question about StashAway, feel free to reach out to us at support@stashaway.sg or you will find our phone number and WhatsApp numbers on our website.

Thank you.