Fund Smart gets a massive upgrade — more currency options, direct dividend payouts, AI access

The cat’s finally out of the bag! 

The Endowus product and engineering teams, together with our Investment Office, have been working hard behind the scenes to bring you an improved Fund Smart platform. This gives you more flexibility and information in selecting your own funds and building your own portfolios. 

Find out more about the enhancements we’ve made, so you can invest better and work your money harder towards your life goals.

Wider currency options for investing

We’ve always been focused on providing access to best-in-class funds from the world’s top fund managers, so you can get better quality products at lower cost. We have now enhanced our platform to enable multi-currency deposits and conversions (for up to six currencies: AUD, USD, CHF, GBP, EUR, SGD), which means that you can now invest in non-SGD-denominated funds from leading fund managers. 

When should I buy multi-currency funds? Does this matter to me?

• Some funds with certain investment strategies may only exist in certain currencies, so if you want to invest in those strategies, you must invest in the underlying currency of that fund.
  
  
• If you have goals or liabilities in a certain currency (for example, to pay off a mortgage in Australia), your exposure should be hedged to that currency. You can read more about why currency hedging matters, especially in fixed income investing, and how to think about currency exposure in your portfolios.

How to invest in a fund that is not SGD-denominated

To invest in a non-SGD-denominated fund, simply set up a portfolio via Fund Smart. You can toggle to view funds of different currencies at the fund selection page, and construct your portfolio with your currency of choice. Each portfolio can only support a single currency. 

Fund non-SGD investments conveniently 

There are two ways to fund your multi-currency investments after setting up the portfolio on Fund Smart:

1. Multi-currency cash deposits 

Simply select the “Change” currency option on the Fund Deposit page to deposit money in any of the six currencies supported. 

It will take one to two business days for multi-currency cash deposits to be reflected in your account. This is due to the time required for telegraphic transfer between banks. 

2. Multi-currency conversion 

Alternatively, another way to fund your non-SGD investments is to select the “Convert currency” option under the “Transfers” section. Next, input the cash amount and currency you would like to convert. 

The newly converted currency should be made available for investing almost immediately. 

Although the rate is not fixed until the conversion transaction is completed, an indicative conversion rate will be shown for reference. This indicative rate may differ from the final rate due to market movements. 

We offer a very competitive all-in foreign exchange (FX) rate from our wholesale FX broker(s). Endowus does not take a spread or earn from the bid-ask spread from these FX transactions.

To learn more about currency conversions on Endowus, click here.

Customise your dividend payout option 

Clients can now select from three different dividend payout options for distribution share class funds on Endowus. This means more flexibility to customise your portfolios based on your goals, investing horizon, and needs.

As you create your goal, you can now choose from any of the following distribution options:

1. Deposit your dividends to your Endowus cash balance;
2. Withdraw your dividends to your bank account; or
3. Reinvest your dividends at no cost (for Cash/CPF/SRS investments) 

This customisation of payout preferences only applies to cash investments — it is not available for CPF or SRS, whereby payouts must be reinvested. 

If you choose the option to withdraw the dividends to your bank account, the minimum withdrawal amount is S$10. Payouts of less than S$10 will be kept in your Endowus cash balance.

To learn more about customising your dividend payout, click here.

Improved experience for verified accredited investors

Verified accredited investors (AI) can now view AI funds that are available on the Fund Smart platform. This means that verified AI clients can now self-serve and purchase AI funds directly via Fund Smart.

Learn more about our AI offerings here.

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Endowus Fund Smart enables you to customise and build your own portfolios at a low, fair fee. Select from 200+ best-in-class funds, curated by our Investment Office that implements a strict, institutional-grade screening process — called SMART+. 

Learn more about Fund Smart here.