Acorns to launch its own superannuation product
The micro-investment app's new super product, Acorns Grow Australia Super, will be available from March.
The micro-investment app's new super product, Acorns Grow Australia Super, will be available from March.Micro-investment platform Acorns has today announced it will launch its own super product to sit within its existing app. The Acorns app is popular with Australians, particularly millennials, for its simple approach to investing by rounding up everyday transactions and adding the loose change into an investment portfolio on their behalf. The super product, Acorns Grow Australia Super, will follow in the same footsteps aiming to simplify superannuation.
Managing director of Acorns George Lucas said the new super product, like the existing investment product, has been built with young Australians in mind. “We see younger Australians want to take a more active interest in their financial future and we want to help them understand that superannuation should be seen as their money, to invest in a way that aligns with their values and their lives.”
“The millennial generation, which our user base skews heavily towards, have traditionally been viewed as poor savers, but we don’t believe that stereotype at Acorns Australia. Hundreds of thousands of young people are building up a level of savings for retirement. Similarly, we’re often told millennials do not engage with their superannuation, but we are confident we can also bust that myth with the upcoming launch of Acorns Grow Australia Super through the app," he said.
Acorns isn't the first product trying to grab a piece of the growing millennial superannuation pie. For example, there's Spaceship super, launched in January 2017, which has a strong focus on technology assets saying it invests where the world is going not where it has been. And GROW Super, launched a few months later in May, also targets millennials, armed with a modern user experience including the popular loose change round-up feature and the ability to customise and self-select insurance cover.
Lucas is confident the new Acorns super product will stand out in the market, citing its performance history and user-friendly platform as key advantages. Plus, there's the loyal user base of 400,000 Acorns users. "We have a performance track record, number one. So the average user of the Acorns portfolio has been getting about 13.99% p.a since inception. Everything will be through the Acorns app as well, including signing up and joining. It will be displayed in the same way, you can change portfolios in the same way, all that functionality that you have with Acorns will be replicated for the super product."
The new super product will have the same fees and portfolio options as the existing investing product. The app currently offers six portfolio options ranging from conservative to aggressive, and including a socially responsible portfolio option known as the Emerald Portfolio. While the new super product will not support the popular round-up feature that users have grown to love with the investing product, Lucas said it wasn't what customers wanted. “Our main priority is to keep the same functionality that the acorns app has, and to keep the same portfolio that Acorns users have been using, under a super wrapper. That’s what customers have been asking for.”
Users will be able to just use the existing investment product or sign up for only the super product, or they can choose to have both products. Users can register their interest in Acorns Grow Australia Super from today, and the product will be made available from March.
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Picture: Supplied by Acorns
