Months post brand awareness campaign, MoneyOwl announces shutting of ops

 Despite running a branding campaign just two months back, NTUC social enterprise MoneyOwl, has now announced that it will be winding down its financial advisory business and will be ceasing all its commercial activities by 31 December 2023. The news comes following a joint review with its shareholder NTUC Enterprise. During a joint review, it was concluded that the business will not be commercially viable and resources will be redeployed to other areas for greater social impact.

As part of its winding down process, MoneyOwl will transfer its investment and insurance businesses to iFAST Financial (iFast), which will reach out to MoneyOwl clients from September 2023. When asked why iFast was chosen for its existing clientele, a spokesperson from MoneyOwl told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE that iFast has been the provider of custodial and platform services to MoneyOwl’s investment clients since 2019. Through iFast, its clients will have a near-seamless transition for investments as their investment accounts are already held with iFAST, added the spokesperson for MoneyOwl.

Don't miss: MoneyOwl shifts gears from tactical marketing to brand building

The news comes rather abruptly as in July, MoneyOwl rolled out a campaign aimed at raising brand awareness and to encourage greater financial awareness with the introduction of a new friend for MoneyOwl to encourage more relatable dialogue.  The adorable new friend, a donkey named Smart Ass, was created to engage MoneyOwl in a series of discussions about interest rates, investing and stocks in a series of campaign images.  MARKETING-INTERACTIVE understands that the campaign was done with marketing agency That Marketing Guy. 

While the company is known to skew its marketing plans towards the tactical, in 2021 MoneyOwl decided to shift gears and build its brand with the everyday Singaporean consumer. In a statement to MARKETING-INTERACTIVE then, Chuin Ting Weber, founding chief executive officer and chief investment officer, had said that it was essential to build brand awareness for the long term and not just product-led campaign. With its 2021 country-wide branding campaign, Chuin said the brand was looking to reach a wider audience.

Meanwhile, on the closure, Chuin said the company was established in 2018 to address a gap in the mass market for comprehensive financial advice and focused on providing simple, unbiased fit-for-purpose financial planning solutions. Despite the company’s investment in resources to expand its outreach and leveraging on its union network, it realised that there was not enough of a market in the gap, she explained.

As MoneyOwl ceases its operations, it has engaged the Banking and Financial Services Union (BFSU) to offer compensation packages and support or its employees during this period, according to a statement by the company.

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