Silverlake Digital INX Sdn Bhd, a member of Silverlake Group, and Japanese fintech Money Design Co., Ltd. today announced the launch MYTHEO, a robo advisory service offered through a joint-venture company, GAX MD Sdn. Bhd.
Silverlake is a name that is familiar to many of us within the financial services industry as the locally bred software champion providing core banking system to many of our banks locally and regionally.
Ronnie Tan, CEO of GAX MD, told reporters during their press conference that they’ve been exploring this business model since Securities Commission Malaysia announced the launch of their Digital Investment Management Framework in 2017.
It was then that they started searching of suitable partners and finally landed Japanese Money Design Co. as a partner.
According to Tomoyoshi Hirose, Co Founder, Money Design Co., their robo-advisory service THEO was the first to be regulated by the Japan Financial Services Agency and they are currently serving over 60,000 Japanese investors and managing over USD 300 Million in assets.
Given Silverlake’s existing relationship with banks from around the region, many would have expected the software company to leverage that strength and go down the route of white-labelling their services to banks instead of marketing directly to consumers; which could end up being quite a costly affair.
However Ronnie shared that they’ve went down this route because they are confident that millennials that make up 29% of the Malaysian population is a large untapped market when it comes investment products.
He believes that MYTHEO will be able to effectively market its services to this segment through a combination and offline and online marketing strategies.
Ronnie also did not rule out the possibility of eventually white labelling this service to banks once they’ve gain some traction with the consumers. He also shared that once this model has been proven to be successful in Malaysia they are also open to expand this service to other regions as well.
MYTHEO is the second robo advisory service to formally launch in Malaysia following Singaporean fintech StashAway who received their license from Securities Commission last November.