Review Of Autumn App – Worth Downloading If You’re Planning To Seek Financial Independence, Retire Early

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In pursuit of our financial goals, we will often have different investments bought or held on various platforms. This can make it tricky and tedious to track and measure the performance of our overall portfolio.

Solving this problem, is the Autumn app, a mobile application that is available both on Android and iOS platforms. Autumn is an incubated venture by SC Ventures and is a subsidiary of Standard Chartered; therefore, it adopts the same bank-level security measures to protect the private information of users.

Simple Sign Up Process For The Autumn App

Signing up is a simple process and can be done either by allowing Autumn access to our information via SingPass or manually submitting our inputs.

The whole signing-up process via SingPass takes less than 5 minutes to complete. Users can also activate the biometric feature offered in the app to log in to the app more seamlessly after the initial sign-up.

Tracking Both Finances And Health

The Overview category is the first page we see on the app and collates all the essential information and sections of the app. The Finance category (one of the icons tabs at the bottom) is currently the most feature-filled section of the app. The other category, Health is still under development but is expected to provide insights to the user’s health score in future. Autumn will also bring in other lifestyle partners to enhance the users’ experience under the health category.

In-Depth Finance Tracking Features

Autumn shines as a one-stop app by presenting users a single dashboard that consolidates their total net worth across multiple platforms, asset classes and regions.

Under the Finance category, there are 4 “cards” or sub-categories to complete:

• Savings and Loans
• CPF Savings
• Investments
• Properties

Savings And Loans

Autumn provides two options for users to input their bank account details. The first option is to automatically connect and sync the bank accounts, which requires the user to have an internet banking account. The other option is to manually input the details.

The app also provides a few categories under savings and loans that allows the user to aggregate the financial data from the different bank accounts. The process is rather straightforward and allows the user to input the details for the past 6 months. At the end, the app calculates the user’s total net worth after deducting for any outstanding loans and also gives a monthly aggregated view of the total savings versus the total outstanding loan.

This function is particularly useful for users who may have multiple savings accounts and loans with different financial institutions and currencies. With this app, users will have a consolidated view, without having to constantly log into the different bank websites to view their latest balances. However, users will need to update their savings and loan balances as part of the weekly update exercise, if the information was initially filled manually or the user can also choose to do an automatic sync.

CPF Savings

The CPF Savings card requires the user to simply update their CPF balances to get a consolidated view within the app. It also provides a projection of the compounded balance when the user turns 65 years old, based on the current balance and assuming the monthly contribution remains the same. From this useful feature, the user can then decide whether to top up their CPF funds to achieve their intended retirement sum by age 65.

Though CPF’s website has a comparable function, having this function embedded within the app enables the user to see how their CPF funds play a role in relation to their entire net worth. The point of the app is to enable users to get an overview of their finances without having to constantly log into different accounts.

Investments

Autumn divides its investment cards into 5 sub-categories, namely:

• Equities
• Fixed Income
• Mutual Funds
• Structured Products
• Other Investments

Recording the details for the equity holdings is rather simple, as the app uses Bloomberg tickers and supports stocks from 14 exchanges, including the commonly invested regions of Singapore, Malaysia, United States and Hong Kong. Users may face a slight inconvenience if they are unfamiliar with the Bloomberg tickers for their equity positions as it may sometimes differ from the other more commonly used stock platforms. However, it can be easily overcome by doing a quick check on the search engines.

The Autumn app also has a huge database of corporate bonds that the user may hold in their portfolio. Though, the list may not be completely exhaustive as we found out when we tried to input a bond transaction OHLSP 6.9% 08July2024 Corp (SGD) – a bond issued by Singapore-listed Oxley Holdings. Nevertheless we were able to find the other two remaining bond offerings from the same issuer and also bonds from other popular issuers.

However, Autumn does not provide inputs for the Singapore Savings Bond (SSB) currently. This is one area they may add in future as SSBs are a popular choice amongst Singaporeans to park their reserve cash given its low-risk and ease of purchase.

Users are also able to input their investments in unit trusts or other structured products into the app. Once the user has recorded all of their investment details into the app, the user is presented with a pie chart depicting the asset allocation according to the various asset classes and is further grouped within regions and sectors. This gives a simple and quick overview of how the investments are allocated, which would otherwise could have been easily overlooked. Moreover, having a better visual depiction of the regional and sector-based risks that the user is now carrying allows for a better understanding of our asset allocation.

Properties

The app also adds the values of properties to the overall calculation of the user’s net worth or financial health. Users simply have to key in their property address, estimated valuation and if there’s any outstanding mortgage loan attached to the property.

The app then geo-tags the property and adjusts the user’s net worth based on the property value and outstanding loan, if any. The app also offers to refinance the mortgage loan, which is helpful to users who are on a higher mortgage rate plan.

Other Useful Features Available On Autumn

Retirement Plan

Once the user completes all the Finance cards, the app then prompts the user to start building a retirement plan, which is one of the main highlights of this app. Users can now simply use this app to build their retirement plan by inputting their intended retirement age and their desired monthly income to live on. Thereafter, the app factors in the user’s current monthly income and offsets their monthly expenses, as well as accounts for the user’s current assets to build a retirement plan. The user is then presented with a retirement graph that first provides a target retirement goal and then identifies how close (or far) the user is, to achieve it. This gives the user a target to strive for, and with the app doing the heavy lifting of tracking the performance of the user’s investments and net worth, it makes it easy for the user to calibrate their financial decisions in a more informed manner.

Aspiring To A Better Lifestyle

We all aspire to achieve certain goals like purchasing a private condominium or buying a new car or even taking a month-long Europe tour. Autumn allows users to record up to 5 of such aspirations so that they can focus and work towards these goals.

Having these goals recorded makes one conscientious and prepared to make the necessary spending when the time comes as opposed to spending on them without any prior planning, which can cause a setback to one’s retirement goals.

Insurance

The app allows the user to consolidate all of our insurance policies from various insurers. Once completed, the user is presented with a pie chart showing the total annual premiums payable and the allocation based on the different policy types. This is a very useful feature as most people may not know how much they are paying in premiums on an annual basis or know exactly whether they under or overinsured in a single policy type. But with this app, it is easier to have a better understanding of the user’s insurance coverage.

The app also provides a timely and convenient monthly reminder on the outstanding premium due on any of the policies. This will come in handy for those who are making direct payments and also track the outflows for that month.

The Autumn App

In a world where data privacy is not a privilege but a right, it is important for users to be assured that the developers behind this app are trustworthy as it deals with sensitive personal information. As a subsidiary of Standard Chartered, Autumn adopts similar bank-level security measures to safeguard and protect the financial and health information of its users.

As an independent and holistic retirement planning platform, Autumn not only allows for easy integration of our financial data to derive our consolidated net worth, but it also offers recommendations that are not limited to an existing pool of exclusive partners, but instead uses an open marketplace.

Moreover, the services offered on the Autumn platform are customer-centric as it personalises its recommendations based on the user’s specific goals, aspirations and values from the data provided by the user.

In a sea of finance-related mobile applications, Autumn stands out as a must-have application for every individual looking to keep close tabs on their overall financial well-being and net worth by helping to track our investments and provide guidance to achieve our financial goals.

If you are interested in the Autumn App, you can download and register for free here!