Robo-Advisors Comparison: MYTHEO vs StashAway vs Wahed Invest

What is a robo-advisor?

According to Investopedia,

“Robo-advisors (also spelled robo-adviser or roboadvisor) are digital platforms that provide automated, algorithm-driven financial planning services with little to no human supervision. A typical robo-advisor collects information from clients about their financial situation and future goals through an online survey and then uses the data to offer advice and automatically invest client assets. 

(Investopedia Definition Link)”

In short, it is an investing algorithm that helps us to invest based on our risk appetite. In Malaysia, there are three robo-advisor platforms currently. They are MYTHEO (Link), StashAway (Link) and Wahed Invest (Link). These robo-advisors invest in exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

MYTHEO vs StashAway vs Wahed Invest

The table below shows the comparison of certain attributes for these three platforms.

	MYTHEO	StashAway	Wahed Invest
Inception	2019	2018	2019
Origin	Malaysia	Singapore	US
ETFs domicile	US	US	Malaysia
Number of ETFs available	29	32	3 + 1 mutual fund
Manager	GAX MD Sdn Bhd	StashAway Malaysia Sdn Bhd	Wahed Technologies Sdn Bhd
Minimum deposit	100	0	100 (Only starts investing when reached this amount)
Minimum balance	USD 25	0	0
Annual Management fee	0.5 - 1.0% (Tiered, starts at 1%)	0.2 - 0.8% (Tiered, starts at 0.8%)	0.39% or 0.79% (cut off = RM 500,000)
Currency conversion fee	No	0.1% on spot rate	No
Fees by ETF managers	No	0.15 - 0.25%	No
Withdrawal time	7 - 10 business days	4 - 5 business days	Up to 7 business days

From the table, we can surmise that Wahed Invest has the lowest fee structure. It is also the only platform offering halal investing. However, its list of ETFs (which includes a bond mutual fund) is also the shortest and they are domiciled in Malaysia.

I am not too sure if StashAway is charging the fees by ETF managers or not as these management fees are normally deducted from the funds themselves. Maybe StashAway is just informing the existence of these fees to the investors.

My experience of using MYTHEO

I began to notice robo-advisor when my friend started to invest in StashAway and has good returns. At first, I plan to invest on the same platform to compare the return with my own performance. Nonetheless, I found MYTHEO and decided to invest on this platform instead. Why did I choose MYTHEO? Actually there is no specific reason, just that I would like to try a new platform.

I have started to invest on MYTHEO since November 2019. Thus, it is still too soon to judge its performance. As on 10 December 2019, my return is 0.35% (RM) or 0.37% (USD). The return is lower in RM due to currency loss.

I will share my experience of opening an account with MYTHEO in this article. For its performance review, I will share it once my investment period is longer.

Let’s start with registration. It began with risk assessment. After that, I had to fill in my personal data. Identification card must be uploaded in this stage. Phone number was required to receive SMS for registration process. Besides that, my email address had to be verified. The next stage was fund transfer where I needed to key in my account number and transferred the money. The transfer receipt was also required to be uploaded to the site. It took one day for my fund to be converted to US dollars and another day for my fund to be invested.  

Overall, the registration process is easy. The platform will recommend a portfolio allocation based on our risk assessment. However, it allows us to adjust our portfolio allocation up to six times per year. For the time being, I am using its recommended allocation. The ETFs are divided into three categories: growth, income and inflation hedge. My current allocation is 69% growth, 21% income, and 10% inflation hedge. MYTHEO invests my money in all the 29 ETFs. I shall review its performance after some time.

Referral code

Below is my referral link to MYTHEO. By using this link, I may gain referral reward from your registration with the platform. If you think I have done a good service in explaining the topic, please click on the link below if you have interest to register. Otherwise, you can always search MYTHEO with Google and register yourself.

MYTHEO: Link here – If you register and invest through this link, I will get free three months management fee.