Raiz is a robo advisory available to Malaysians. Making its debut locally in 2020, Raiz promises to make investing easy by helping users to invest their spare change and inculcate investing habits. Is it worth the hype? Read this Raiz review to find out.
Who’s Behind Raiz Malaysia?
Raiz is originally form Australia. In Malaysia, Raiz was established as a joint venture company between the Australian parent company as well as Permodalan Nasional Berhad. This JV means that Raiz primarly invests in investment products from PNB itself and does not rely on ETFs like the other robo advisors.
What does Raiz do?
Raiz is a mobile-first robo advisor app that helps users to invest their spare change, which is a key feature of the service. Spare change investing is not a new concept, popularised by FinTech in the USA like Acorns. What it does is essentially rounding up your purchases from your linked debit and credit cards, making investing a hands-off and painless process. This doesn’t mean that you are limited to investing your spare change only, you can opt to put in more monthly.
For example, if a user buys a cup of coffee for RM6.60, 40 sen will be automatically invested. Similarly, if one buys groceries for RM130.10, 90 sen will be automatically invested. The objective is to modernise the old practice of saving loose change.
Cover Story: Putting your loose change to work – The Edge, 5/8/2020
What makes Raiz different?
As Raiz is positioned to help newbie investors get used to investing monthly, the start-up capital required is as low as RM5. Recurring deposits is also available so you can automate your investment.
Being a joint venture effort with PNB, Raiz only offers unit trust products under Amanah Saham Nasional berhad.
Other than the spare change investing portion, Raiz is not all that different from the other robo advisors, as it promises a personalised portfolio recommendation based on your risk profile from a set of questions.
How to Deposit into Raiz Account?
Deposits can be made via online transfer. Recurring deposits can also be activated without any extra charges.
Aside from the recurring deposit, it seems that the spare change or micro investing is one of the core features.
For the purpose of producing this Raiz review, I have to be honest and state that personally I don’t use this because I invested into Raiz only as part of my comparison with the other robo advisors, which means I need to deposit equal amounts for all the robo advisors monthly. Turning on the round up will skew the results.
Initially only Maybank debit card was supported, but now it seems that any Visa credit and debit card can be linked with Raiz for the rounding-up feature.
What Does Raiz Invest in?
Raiz offers 4 types of portfolio from ASNB, namely:
- Conservative (low risk)
- Moderate (medium risk)
- Aggressive (high risk)
- Custom Portfolio
I set my risk profile to maximum, so my profile is currently set to Aggressive. Under my personalised profile, my portfolio consists of 80% equity and 20% mixed asset. The breakdown is as below:
Equity
- ASN Equity 3 Fund
Mixed Asset
- ASN Sara 1 Fund
Bear in mind this composition should be different if you chose a different risk profile at the initial setting up of your account. Portfolio rebalancing is taken care of automatically at the back end.
What about the “Custom Portfolio” feature? It looks like this:
The Custom Portfolio feature allows you to tweak the allocated unit trust weightage according to your preference. As of the time of writing, it seems that only the following are offered:
- UOB United-i Global Balanced Fund (Shariah)
- Aberdeen Islamic World Equity Fund
- UOB United-i ESG Series – High Quality Sukuk Fund (Shariah)
- Affin Hwang Shariah Gold Tracker Fund
What Fees Does Raiz Charge?
Raiz charges RM1.50 monthly for accounts less than RM6000. For those having deposits more than RM6000, the charge is 0.30%. While this may seem low, bear in mind that Raiz invests in unit trust funds which generally have a higher expense ratio, so you may not see the actual expenses upfront.
How is My Experience Using Raiz?
Raiz offers a quick user signup process. Simply download the app and you’re ready to go. The KYC process is pretty straightforward. As Raiz is mobile-first, there is no web dashboard to login. Everything can be done on your mobile app.
Raiz interface is pretty smooth. Everything is displayed clearly, without too much details. I like that Raiz offers a set-and-forget recurring deposit as I’m a huge fan of automation. You can also check your transaction history, as well as your investment progress in one panel.
How is Raiz’s Performance So Far?
Raiz is part of my public money experiment pitting 6 different robo advisors against each other started in April 2021.
Surprisingly, my Raiz portfolio came in 1st in the first year of April 2021-April 2022, with a -1.89% one-year total return since inception as of 28th April 2022. Attached below is screenshot from the performance screen, which is pretty nifty and similar to how other robo advisors display your portfolio performance.
Should You Invest with Raiz?
Raiz is a very decent robo advisor app, popular among the young investor crowd as it’s easily accessible with very low minimum investment amount. It’s good for beginners as you are investing in trusted unit trust products from PNB, a local government-linked investment house. However, if you’re looking for exposure to foreign equities, Raiz might be limited in that aspect.
Raiz Signup Bonus
I hope this Raiz review is useful for you. If you’re interested to try Raiz, feel free to use my referral below. When you use my referral link and deposit, we both get RM20!
How is your experience with Raiz so far? Feel free to leave comments below!