Robo Advisors Singapore Market

Robo Wars: How Singapore Robo-Advisors Syfe, Endowus, and StashAway Performed in Q2 and H1 2023

Calvin Lo

Singapore robo-advisors Syfe, Endowus, and StashAway have reported their Q2 and H1 2023 performance. Let’s see how they stacked up against each other, and who came out on top. In this post, I’ll primarily be looking at respective robo-advisor’s core portfolio offerings. All 3 also offer thematic portfolios, but I won’t be comparing those.

Benchmark: MSCI All-Country World Index (ACWI)

See MSCI ACWI 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.

I’ve captured a screenshot below, but it’s for period ending 31 July 2023. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the one for 30 June 2023 anymore.

Syfe Core Portfolios

Syfe Core Equity100 returned 2.9% in July 2023, which outperformed MSCI ACWI return of 1.9% by +1.0%. However, Core Equity100 actually underperformed slightly YTD July by -1.3%, returning 15.9% vs 17.2% for MSCI World index.

Read my review of Syfe Equity100

Against S&P Target Risk benchmarks, Core Growth outperformed (though with higher equity allocation) but Core Balanced and Core Defensive underperformed so far YTD July.

Read: Syfe’s H1 2023 Performance: A Deep Dive 

Syfe Core portfolios’ equity allocations are generally exposed to S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 tracking ETFs (CSPX, RSP, and QQQ), with a tilt towards defensive sectors of utilities (XLU) and health care (XLV). In addition, Core portfolios also have an allocation to gold through GLD (SPDR Gold Trust).

One other portfolio to highlight is the Syfe REIT+ portfolio, which continues to outperform its benchmark iEdge S-REIT Leaders Index as well as peer ETFs.

Read my review of Syfe REIT+

Endowus Flagship Portfolios

Endowus Flagship continued to underperform in Q2 and H1 2023. Comparing Very Aggressive (100-0) vs MSCI ACWI, Flagship underperformed by -0.9% and -1.7% in Q2 and H1 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. Flagship Balanced also underperformed, but Flagship Conservative actually outperformed.

Read: Endowus Q2 2023 Performance Review

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

Comparing between Flagship Cash/SRS vs CPF portfolios, all Flagship CPF portfolios have outperformed Cash/SRS equivalents except for Flagship Very Conservative. The equity funds that make up Flagship Cash/SRS are actually pretty different from Flagship CPF (didn’t look at the bond funds).

Flagship CPF only had 4 funds, 75% of which were Amundi funds. On the other hand, Flagship Cash/SRS had a mix of Amundi, iShares, and Dimensional funds. See screenshots below. Thus, the difference in performance between Flagship Cash/SRS vs CPF is not surprising after all.

Flagship Cash/SRS
Flagship CPF

StashAway General Investing Portfolios

StashAway is the easiest to evaluate, since they compare General Investing (GI) portfolio returns against respective same-risk benchmark returns side-by-side, and even compute the relative performance.

StashAway’s lower SRI GI portfolios powered by StashAway actually performed much better in Q2 vs Q1, outperforming their benchmarks by as much as +1.6% in Q2. However, higher SRI GI portfolios continue to underperform their benchmarks. In addition, the underperformance worsens the higher the SRI.

I’ve not been able to do a direct comparison between GI portfolios powered by StashAway vs BlackRock, since they’re categorised differently. However, GI (BlackRock) appears to be performing slightly better.

Read: Our Returns in the First Half of 2023

My Thoughts

In general, core portfolios of all 3 robo-advisors have a slight defensive tilt, but have vastly different approaches to achieving that defensiveness.

This quarter, I’m only impressed by StashAway’s lower-SRI GI portfolios and Endowus’ Flagship Very Conservative. Seems like the higher risk portfolios from all 3 robo-advisors couldn’t keep up with the global benchmark index. That said, Endowus’ Flagship CPF portfolios performed commendably, considering there are limited avenues to invest CPF OA.

Considering that H1 2023 has almost been entirely a bull market, the best approach for aggressive investors would probably have just been to invest directly into ETFs instead of through these robo-advisors. However, if you’re a conservative investor, StashAway lower-SRI GI portfolios might be a good option to consider.

On the most aggressive end of the spectrum, Endowus Flagship CPF seems to have performed the best in H1 with a 13.9% return, followed by Flagship Cash/SRS and StashAway GI powered by BlackRock Very Aggressive at 13.3% return, then Syfe Core Equity100 at 12.7% return, and lastly StashAway SRI 36% (only 90% equity + 10% gold) at 12.1%

In my personal opinion, the winner for Q2 and H1 2023 goes to….Endowus!!

So far this is the 2nd quarter I’ve tracked the performance of these 3 robo-advisors. In my Q1 2023 Robo Wars Performance post, I dubbed Syfe as the winner. Would be interesting to see if any long term winner arises by tracking every quarter.

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

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