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Robo Advisors Singapore Market

Robo Wars: How Singapore Robo-Advisors Syfe, Endowus, and StashAway Performed in Q1 2023

Calvin Lo

Singapore robo-advisors Syfe, Endowus, and StashAway have reported their Q1 2023 performance. Let’s see how they stacked up against each other, and who came out on top.

Benchmark: MSCI World Index

See MSCI World Index performance below for reference and comparison (from latest factsheet). Note that these returns are in USD, so figures might differ from returns in SGD (Endowus and StashAway) due to currency exchange.

Syfe Core Portfolios

Syfe Core Equity100 returned 4.2% in March, which outperformed MSCI World Index return of 3.2% by +1.0%. However, Core Equity100 actually underperformed slightly YTD by -0.7%, returning 7.2% vs 7.9% for MSCI World index.

I wasn’t able to compare Core Growth, Core Balanced, and Core Defensive since Syfe didn’t provide equivalent benchmarks, but the YTD returns look pretty impressive.

Endowus Flagship Portfolios

Endowus Flagship underperformed in March and YTD. Comparing Very Aggressive (100-0) vs MSCI ACWI, Flagship underperformed by -0.7% and -0.8% in March and YTD respectively. Flagship Balanced (60-40) would probably be compared to Global 60:40 index, and Very Conservative should probably be compared to the Bloomberg Global Aggregate Index. In both comparisons, Flagship underperformed.

Note that Flagship Cash/SRS returns differs vs Flagship CPF due to slightly different composition of funds (some funds are not approved for CPFIS).

Read: Endowus Q1 2023 Performance Review

StashAway General Investing Portfolios

StashAway is the easiest to evaluate, since they compare General Investing portfolio returns against respective same-risk benchmark returns side-by-side, and even compute the relative performance. All portfolios at various SRI underperformed their benchmarks.

Read: Our Returns in the First Quarter of 2023

My Thoughts

Assuming all 3 robo-advisors calculate returns the same way (I’m not sure if there’s an industry standard), Syfe Core portfolios appear to be performing the best and coming closest to global market indices. Even Core Defensive (which is ~70% equities, ~20% bonds, ~10% commodities) returned 4.9% YTD, which is actually pretty close to the returns of the Global 60:40 index. At the higher-risk end, Core Equity100 returned 7.2% YTD.

Read my review of Syfe Equity100 portfolio.

StashAway allocates their portfolios based on risk, which totally differs from the more traditional allocation methods of Syfe and Endowus, thus making direct comparisons challenging.

However based on the range of returns across the risk spectrum, Endowus and StashAway seem to perform pretty similarly with a slight edge to Endowus. Endowus’ YTD returns range from 5.8% for Very Aggressive to 2.1% for Very Conservative. Similarly, StashAway’s YTD returns range from 5.5% for SRI 36% to 1.8% for SRI 6.5%.

Note that one quarter doesn’t form a trend, but at least for this quarter the winner in my view is Syfe (which I’m invested in too, so yay!).

Would be interesting to track this quarterly to see if there’s a consistent trend in performance for these 3 robo-advisors. If I have time and interest, I might try to compare the various portfolios directly head-to-head based on their asset allocations.

Disclosure: I’m invested in Syfe and Endowus portfolios.

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Disclaimer: This is not financial advice. I am not professional financial advisor nor do I work in the finance industry. Anything I write here is purely my personal opinion. Please do your own research and due diligence before investing into anything. All investments come with associated risks. Best to consult a financial advisor if you’re still unsure.

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