American-based Wahed Invest halal robo-advisory platform announced today that they have successfully obtained regulatory approval from the Securities Commission Malaysia to offer digital investment management services in Malaysia.

The approval Malaysia Security Commision Chairman, Syed Zaid said, this approval would further facilitate the growth of local fintech landscape.

“Today, Malaysia has three licensed and fully operational robo-advisors — namely StashAway, MyTHEO and Wahed Inc. We continue to see strong interest in this space and will pursue to facilitate its growth,” he said in his opening address at the SCxSC Fintech Conference 2019 in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

Robo-advisors are a class of financial advisor that provides financial advice or investment management, based on mathematical rules or algorithms via online with moderate to minimal human intervention.

Robo-advisors emerged in the market following the introduction of SC framework on Digital Investment Management in 2017.

Syed Zaid also said the latest allocation under Budget 2020 could further chart the growth of alternative market-based financing platforms.

In the budget, the Finance Ministry has allocated RM50 million to the Malaysia Co-Investment Fund (MyCIF) to help finance start-ups and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) by co-investing on a one-to-four basis in campaigns listed on equity crowdfunding (ECF) and peer-to-peer (P2P) financing platforms.

“We expect this injection to further spur the growth of our ECF and P2P financing industry, which in turn could catalyse growth in Malaysian SMEs by providing access to alternative sources of financing,“ he said.

Citing its support for the Malaysian government’s thrust towards the Islamic Digital Economy, the startup said that it is set to launch in Malaysia and that it intends to make Malaysia their Asia Pacific Hub. Its APAC operations is led by Syakir Hashim, who previously co-founded the Skolafund

Source : Two More Robo-advisory Enter Malaysia

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Image Credit : Wahed Invest’s Twitter account