KUALA LUMPUR: Raiz Malaysia Sdn Bhd aims to increase its accounts to over 450,000 this year, driven by its goal to help Malaysians to save through spending.
“Our target is not sophisticated investors, but more towards average Malaysians on the street who find it difficult to start saving because of the huge amount required by investment bankers or banks,” Raiz CEO Aidi Izham (pic) told SunBiz.
“So that’s why we remove those barriers and make it very low for one to start investing.”
He said that initially its long-term goal is to onboard 1% of the Malaysian population, which is about 300,000 users.
As at Feb 29, he disclosed that it has about 404,000 accounts registered to its app.
Aidi said that its new target this year will be to reach more than 450,000 accounts.
“Our target will always be to onboard as many Malaysian as possible, to be our users,” he added.
He explained that the financial services app works by allowing users to invest small amounts of money into a diversified portfolio of assets.
The app utilises an in-built rounding-up feature, whereby it automatically rounds up your everyday purchases in ringgit and invest the spare change through debit card usage.
Besides round-ups, users may invest lump sum amount or set their recurring investments on a daily, weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis.
In terms of asset under management (AUM), it manages about RM50 million to date.
He explained that the company’s main focus is not to solely grow its AUM but rather on increasing the number or accounts.
On the other hand, he said it plans to discuss with Employees Provident Fund (EPF) to explore the possibility of a collaboration between the two.
“We have a very strong value proposition, because looking at figures, the demographics of our investors, they are average Malaysians, quite a significant number work in informal sectors or are gig workers and EPF is targeting to help gig workers, if it could materialise it would be beneficial for the workers.”
He said that one of the solutions it could explore with EPF is by developing a solution that targets gig workers, which could help them save for their retirement through spending.
“For example, if the gig worker fills up their tank at a petrol station at RM10.30, it would round up to RM11, the spare change would go towards their EPF account.
“We are a spare change player, we don’t aim to change spending behaviour, but rather to spend and save as they go and it could ultimately, go towards their retirement fund,” he added.
He reckoned that if it collaborates with EPF, it would not be limited to only gig workers, albeit also for all EPF members as a whole, through linking an EPF member with their Raiz account.
In terms of outlook, he reckoned that the electronics and electrical products (E&E) industry fuelled by artificial intelligence will be strong for the year due to recent global developments.
“We are very optimistic that (E&E) will continue to (flourish) for the whole of 2024,” said Aidi, noting that there will be ups and down in terms of investment but he reckoned that the industry will continue to thrive.
