In 2016, our co-founder and CEO, Michele, who at that point had already spent more than 10 years building substantial companies, had been looking for a way to put his savings to work. He was getting fed up with how the banks were only presenting him with over-priced products, and low-quality, biased, one-size fits-no one advice. He wanted the personalised, cost-efficient options that he knew had been made possible in other regions in the world. So, he set out to build the investment products he wanted so that he could also offer them across the region. First, he sought out Nino, who was familiar with the robo-advisory market in Europe, and who had led multiple tech companies around the world. He was on board to create a cost-efficient trading service and top-tier user experience. Then, just a few weeks later, understanding how banks aren’t exactly customer-centric, Freddy joined them to build and manage a data-driven investment framework leveraging his 20 years of experience managing major funds around the world. Since then, they’ve built and led a team that’s committed to creating transparent investment products structured in our clients’ best interests, and delivering that through a seamless digital experience. Along the way, Asia Capital Advisors, Eight Roads, the proprietary investment arm of Fidelity International, and other prominent leaders in the financial services industry have joined us by investing more than $20 million USD in our team so that we can build more and better wealth management options. In July 2017, we began offering to everyone our goal-based and General Investing portfolios with a sophisticated investment framework that was once only available to institutional investors. In 2018, we made our services available in Malaysia, started accepting SRS funds, launched our corporate partnership program called WorkPlace, and launched our free personal finance education curriculum, StashAway Academy. In 2019, we launched an Income Portfolio in SGD, our cash management portfolio called StashAway Simple™, and served our first 100,000 clients. And we're just getting started.
