How Endowus built a wealth platform on Singapore's pension system

Executive overview

Most retail investors take too much risk chasing returns without a clear need driving their decisions. Endowus built a regulated wealth platform that starts with the investor's goal — not the market — and routes CPF pension funds into institutional-grade investment products.

The founders bootstrapped for four years, built a purpose-built tech stack to integrate with Singapore's government pension system, and scaled to $5 billion in assets across 400+ strategies. Human fund curation, not AI, underpins their investment process.

The core insight: asset allocation — driven by your "why" — determines long-term returns; everything else is noise.

Founding and team

• Greg (CEO) lost 90% of trading gains in college; that failure led him to study the science of investing over speculation
• Sam (Chairman/CIO) retired at 42 after burnout as both CEO and CIO at Morgan Stanley Asia; joined to tackle the global pension crisis
• Ju (CTO) left Goldman Sachs skeptical the team could penetrate Singapore's $400B government pension fund — joined anyway for the upside of a 30% chance at something "insane"
• Ju spent his entire life savings buying Endowus shares; had under $7,000 left in his bank account

Building on CPF

• CPF (Central Provident Fund) is Singapore's mandatory pension scheme — ~$400B in assets, one of the largest pension funds globally
• Retail investors resented it: 20% of income locked up, inaccessible for emergencies or business
• Endowus built a purpose-built, cloud-native tech stack to integrate with CPF's decades-old government systems — no guarantee of approval
• Under five engineers; nine-month deadline to go live or lose their financial license
• Approval came end of 2019; scaled from zero to $500M in assets after launch

Platform evolution

• Launched as a robo-advisor; deliberately evolved into a platform model — "like Amazon" — enabling personalised, curated portfolios
• Lowered minimum investment to $1,000 to serve college students; simultaneously moved upmarket to high-net-worth clients
• Investment office staffed with professionals from Cambridge, Mercer, and Morningstar — filters global mutual funds and ETFs for best-in-class products
• Rejected AI-driven fund selection: experienced human advisors outperform current AI for fund curation and due diligence

Investment philosophy

• Start with "why": define the real-world need the money must meet (retirement, house, education) before choosing any instrument
• Asset allocation — driven by time horizon and risk capacity — determines long-term returns, not stock picks
• Younger investors can hold 100% equities; those near retirement need conservative, lower-risk allocation
• For U.S. equities: lowest-cost passive index funds. For fixed income: active managers (e.g. PIMCO, Allianz, JP Morgan)
• Sell only when a real need arises — buying a house, reaching retirement — never to "time the market"
• Human beings cannot predict market direction; anyone claiming otherwise lacks credibility

Lessons and outlook

• Attract talent through mission, not VC money — mission must outlast the founders
• Resilience matters: loneliness, physical strain, and health costs are real at startups; treat it as a marathon
• Asia's wealth market is in the trillions; $5B in assets is "a fingernail of the market"
• Long-term goal: the largest independent digital wealth platform, built over 25 years