Robo-advisors Syfe and StashAway: How they approach onboarding
Over the course of the pandemic, I’ve been in Singapore where I recently turned twenty. I figured it was time to get serious about what little money I have in my savings account, so I decided to download two of Singapore’s most popular wealth management products: Syfe and Stashaway.
Meanwhile, I’ve been reading Reforge articles, in particular “The Product Strategy Stack.” Evaluating UX features through the “Product Strategy Stack framework” has allowed me to critically analyse product decisions. In this article, I’ll be comparing Syfe and Stashaway’s onboarding flows using the Product Strategy Stack framework.
Persona
- 👧 Demographic: Busy working Singaporean adults between the age of 21 and 45
- 💪 Motivations: Need long-term financial stability; Growing wealth/Saving for several purposes — retirement, school, family
- 🏃🏻 Goals: Grow their money passively using a diversified strategy
- 😈 Frustrations: High costs of wealth management funds; Market volatility; Misunderstanding technical finance concepts
- Interesting fact: According to StashAway’s Insight Report, more than 2/3 of StashAway’s AUM comes from experienced investors. This contradicts the prevailing assumption that robo-advisor users aren’t financially proficient.
What is the Product Strategy Stack?
Reforge Product Strategy Stack diagram:
Note: The boxes for Product Strategy and Roadmap are unfilled as they’ll be described and analysed in this article
As pictured in the above diagram, both Stashaway and Syfe have nearly identical missions and company strategies. However when you deep-dive on their Product Strategy, the two robo-advisors take pretty different approaches.
As defined by Reforge, Product Strategy is “The logical plan for how the product will drive its part of the company strategy.” Product Strategy functions as the connective tissue between company objectives and product work. I’ll be looking at how onboarding drives company strategy to create frictionless investing experiences.
Why Examine Onboarding?
Digital wealth managers prioritise onboarding improvements due to the significant business and user impacts reaped from optimising onboarding. Onboarding allows robo-advisors to:
1) Solve for significant user pain points
Onboarding in heavily regulated industries include plenty of potential friction points. According to an Oliver Wyman report, it can take traditional banks 90–120 days to onboard investors.
2) Generate business impact
Improving onboarding satisfaction directly impacts revenue. According to a McKinsey Fintech report, a one-point increase in NPS for onboarding satisfaction results in a 3% increase in customer revenue.
3) Differentiate themselves in a crowded market
Singapore’s competitive wealth management market includes both startup and traditional banks. Additionally, fintech products naturally have a high onboarding drop-off rate due to high-commitment decisions associated with investing. Due to the complex problem and the competitive market, minor improvements in onboarding can create significant impact due to the problem’s large scope.
StashAway vs. Syfe: Onboarding Deep Dive
StashAway
- Communicate value proposition early: Before the user starts using the app, Stashaway emphasises the flexibility and personalisation of their product through mobile landing pages. The user reach the “Aha” moment before they’ve started onboarding.
- Other observations: Titles of landing pages make users feel empowered; Microcopy explains value proposition.
Syfe
- Introduce a boutique investing experience coupled with flexibility and choice: Headshot of investment advisor adds human touch and exclusivity to investing experience; User is given the flexibility to view and select from different options
- Other observations: Minimalistic shapes and accents of color communicate “boutique” experience; Syfe has more investment products than StashAway.
StashAway: Educate users and empower them to decide a suitable investment
- Educate users: Educational videos teach users about investments; Copy clearly and succinctly explains benefits and drawbacks of each investment
- Present, compare and explain options: For General-Investing, StashAway limits risk categories options to two choices to reduce decision complexity; Explain risk-return relationship and differences between options to aid decision
- Personalise investment plan in a flexible and transparent way: Users who lack confidence investing can create a personalised investment plan/goal through Goals-Based Investing; Give financially-adept users choice to enter target income; Communicate outcome of customisation clearly — which is to identify target income goal
Syfe
- Recommend personalised portfolio by answering simple questions: Copy engages user in a conversational interaction with the “wealth advisor”; Progress bar to encourage users to move through lengthy questionnaire; Display options and choose answers in a delightful and calming way
StashAway
- Transparently break down portfolio components: Break down equities, bonds, etc. and give users option to learn more about each asset class; View projection scenarios on an intuitive graph using simple and clear copy
- Easily modify portfolio, allowing users to quickly re-evaluate decision and adjust: StashAway Risk Index slider allows user to quickly customise and dynamically adjust portfolio
Syfe
- Succinctly describe portfolio and aid decision through human touch: Summarise important information on succinct cards; Emphasises best-case return scenario to reinforce attractiveness of investment; Displays Past Returns to reinforce credibility; Simple process of booking calls with investment expert
Completing the Product Strategy Stack
To achieve a frictionless and transparent investing experience, both companies optimise the onboarding funnel differently.
StashAway’s strategy is to educate and be transparent with the user to allow them to make a well-informed decision. Additionally, they present information in a simple and flexible way to guide decisions. In their roadmap, StashAway would likely prioritise:
- Educational content and copy, which includes engaging videos and investment product descriptions
- Architecture of information to present abundant investing information in a digestible way
Syfe’s strategy is to enable boutique investing experiences at lower costs through personalisation and a wealth-advisory touch. In their roadmap, Syfe would likely prioritise:
- Entrypoints to engaging with wealth-advisors
- Clean and luxury-accented UI
To visualise StashAway and Syfe’s differing priorities, I compared the way they display portfolio projections and asset mix. These are additional details about the portfolio which may need further explanation for the average investor to understand.
Since Syfe focuses on adding human-touch entrypoints, they prioritise allowing users to connect with wealth advisors to learn more about the portfolio. For the user to view portfolio projections in detail, they need to expand the card displayed on the page.
Meanwhile, StashAway prioritises transparently communicating details to help make decisions. Therefore, StashAway displays projections and asset composition on the page where the user confirms the portfolio decision. In line with their strategy, they communicate these details in a digestible format.
Although both products have similar company goals, their products diverge. If there were several overlaps in features built and muddied UX, the companies may lack clear prioritisation. Instead, StashAway and Syfe took different but equally effective approaches to aligning product strategy, roadmap and goals to the company mission and strategy.
StashAway: The Importance of Stack Alignment
Lastly, Reforge highlighted that teams across the company — technology, operations, customer success, marketing — must be aligned to achieve the company-wide strategic potential.
I didn’t actually complete the onboarding funnel for Syfe or StashAway. However, after being inactive on my StashAway account, the customer success team emailed me to communicate their value proposition and help setup my account.
StashAway’s technology and customer success team aligned their roadmaps to create a frictionless onboarding experience for me.
Their product team is likely laser-focused on improving their onboarding funnel and identified stages which have high drop-off rates, including account setup. They likely aligned with customer success to understand the friction points and ideate solutions — one which leverages human support to facilitate account setup. If company strategy isn’t communicated effectively, product and customer success teams would be misaligned and their roadmaps wouldn’t wouldn’t reinforce or complement one other.
