Endowus Cash Smart Portfolios

Endowus Cash Smart is available for Cash and SRS investment.

Cash Smart is a diversified investment portfolio of cash, money market, and short duration fixed income funds. As an investment product, Cash Smart is not capital-guaranteed and it may experience periods of negative returns. The return potential of each Cash Smart portfolio is positively correlated to the risk profile of the underlying investments. Read more here for the differences between each Cash Smart portfolio.

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Difference between Cash Smart and a bank deposit

When you make a deposit at the Deposit Insurance (DI) member bank in Singapore Dollars (SGD), it is insured by the Singapore Deposit Insurance Corporation Limited (SDIC) for up to S$75,000 in the event that the bank fails. As Cash Smart is an investment product and not a bank deposit, it is not insured by the SDIC.

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Safeguarding your financial interests

Cash Smart invests in funds. The funds have their assets ring-fenced by trustees and custodians (in the case of Cash Smart, the trustees and custodians are HSBC for Fullerton and Lion Global, and State Street for UOB Asset Management). You, as the investor, have a custodian as well (in our case this is UOB Kay Hian, Singapore’s largest broker).

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With the custodians in place, Endowus (your financial advisor), as well as Fullerton, Lion Global and UOB Asset Management (the fund managers) never touch your money. The fund managers have strict guidelines for what the fund can and cannot invest in and a team dedicated to working your money harder within their guidelines, executed through the custodians.

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The funds have a diverse set of underlying holdings and counterparties such as bank deposits, fixed deposits, government and corporate debt securities. The funds also have a diverse investor base ranging from financial institutions, sovereign wealth funds, corporations, charities, to individual investors.

The return potential of each Cash Smart portfolio is positively correlated to the risk profile of the underlying investments. For example, Cash Smart Ultra takes the most duration and credit risk in exchange for higher return potential, followed by Cash Smart Enhanced and then Cash Smart Secure.

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The higher risk taken by Ultra and Enhanced in a normal environment does and has provided more upside to the portfolios than Secure, but at the same time, it subjects these products to higher volatility to achieve that higher return. It is therefore important for clients to choose the portfolio based on their goals (i.e what they intend to use the funds for), drawdowns that they are willing to withstand in the worst case scenario and their preferred holding time horizon.

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In calculating the probability of the portfolios achieving their intended goals, we closely monitor their performances over the rolling 3-month and rolling 6-month periods. We also look at the maximum drawdown in the past, such as in March 2020, to calculate how long the portfolio took to recover its losses, which was between 3 to 6 months. However, past performance can only be a reference for future returns and not a guarantee of future returns.

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You should select a Cash Smart portfolio based on your cash management needs, loss tolerance level for your investment and time horizon. If you need help to select a suitable portfolio for your needs, please speak with one of our advisors. You can schedule an advisory call via https://endowus.com/insights/schedule-call-mas-financial-advisor/.

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Note: As of Nov'21 Endowus Cash Smart Core is now referred to as Endowus Cash Smart Secure. There is no change in the underlying investment offering.‍

How are the projected return ranges calculated?
We use a projected return range, instead of a fixed yield, based on the following considerations:

• We consider actual realised yield as returns
• Yields are not guaranteed

The projections are updated on a monthly basis based on the latest updates from the Fund Managers on the individual funds. Please refer to https://endowus.com/cash-smart for the last projected return range of each Cash Smart Portfolio.

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Difference between returns and yields
Return is the increase or decrease in the investment value of the underlying fixed income holdings, while the yield is the payouts generated by the fixed income holdings.

Imagine you are giving a loan of $10,000 to your friend, Mr A, who promises to repay you the sum in a few years’ time. Meanwhile, Mr A agrees to pay you a monthly interest as a token of appreciation. Here, the monthly interest you will receive is the yield (or yield-to-maturity) of the loan.

Now, let’s imagine that Mr A suddenly loses his job two months later, and you’re not sure if he can repay the $10,000. Mr A offers to pay you a higher monthly interest rate just to prove that everything is fine (i.e. the yields have increased), but you still feel uneasy.

At the same time, a mutual friend, Ms B, hears of this situation and thinks that the loan is interesting – the interest rate is attractive, and for some reason, she trusts that Mr A can find a job soon. She offers to replace you as the lender, buying the loan from you for $15,000.

If you do “sell” the loan to Ms B, you would have made a profit of $5000 AND the two monthly interest you have received so far. This is the return of your loan.

Let’s put this back into the perspective of Cash Smart. The underlying funds of Cash Smart each invest in the “loans” to companies. They will also each receive interest on the loans, and on a portfolio-level – this is the Cash Smart yield.

Meanwhile, the “loans” are subject to various factors, including the financials of the companies, or even the market environment as a whole, and such factors influence the value of the loans that the funds can earn if they chose to sell the loan to a third party. This value changes on a daily basis, and is reflected as the Cash Smart projected return.

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Why does Endowus use yields, and NOT returns, as the Cash Smart “projected returns”?
As illustrated above, there’s a fundamental difference between yields and returns, and that is the timeframe:

• Yields are based on the future payouts that you’re expected to receive. When Mr A offers to increase the payout, your yield increases accordingly. As such, yields are forward-looking.
  Returns are based on what you have already earned, like the payouts you have already received and the change in today’s price compared to the prices in the past.
• Returns, as such, are backward-looking.

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Please refer here for more information.

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