Even In The Middle Of Global Conflict, Raiz's Micro Customers Keep Up

JAKARTA - In the midst of the dynamics of the Ukraine conflict situation which caused fluctuations in commodity prices and affected the capital market, Raiz as one of the online Mutual Fund (Aperd) selling agents, namely PT Raiz Invest Indonesia, managed to increase the number of its customers to close to 20 percent (year to date).

Financial technology (fintech) company Raiz Indonesia is now able to increase the number of customers so that it has managed about 550,000 customer accounts as of the end of March, up 17.8 percent from last year's position of 450,000 accounts.

"Of these accounts, the number of active accounts owned by customers reached 230,000 accounts. The addition of these accounts was mainly supported by the increase in payment options and the addition of an online product line, namely Protected Mutual Funds (RDT)," said Fahmi Arya, CEO of Raiz Indonesia, at the opening ceremony fasting with the media, 12 April.

Protected Mutual Funds or RDTs are Mutual Funds based on conventional and sharia debt securities that have the concept of protection of the principal investment at maturity (through an investment management mechanism).

This type of investment product has two main advantages compared to other types of mutual funds. The first is the potential for better returns than bank deposits and distributed periodically. This potential profit is due to the underlying asset of RDT using bonds which have a higher risk than time deposits but can also provide better returns.

Second, the minimum investment is lower than the minimum deposit investment requirements. In investing in RDT online through Raiz Indonesia, people can experience investing with investment values starting from IDR 1 million.

At Raiz, customers don't need to have a specific balance, they can choose which RDT products are being offered and buy them in the app easily. Until the end of March 2022, Raiz Indonesia has successfully offered six RDTs to the public which are managed by PT Avrist Asset Management, PT STAR Asset Management, and PT Trimegah Asset Management.

"Giving convenience to customers rather than having to be a priority customer first, as well as being an RDT Online supermarket," said Fahmi.

He said the online RDT sale was one of Raiz Indonesia's strategies in popularizing capital market investment to the public. Furthermore, two other strategies that will be taken by Raiz Indonesia are to introduce Raiz Rewards to its application users and the existence of a new asset instrument that will be offered by the company in the second quarter of 2022.

Raiz Rewards is a return on investment or investback program for every online shopping made by customers. With this investback, customers can invest without reducing the intensity of their shopping on the shopping, investment, and food platforms, which are already available in the Raiz application.

In addition to collaborating with the shopping, investment, and food platforms, Raiz Indonesia also helps develop MSMEs which have an important role for the economy, particularly in increasing gross domestic product and employment.

The MSME development was carried out by Raiz Indonesia through a collaboration with the application named Selleri. Currently, Selleri has connected with MSME players and helped thousands of their products to be sold through the online platform.

With the help of this technology, as many as 1,200 Seller suppliers and 50,000 resellers can market MSME products through Social Media Channels such as Facebook, Instagram, WA, and other marketplaces. Every month each reseller has an average income of IDR 5 million from their activities at Selleri.

"Furthermore, Selleri's mission is to help create financial independence for Selleri partners, therefore Selleri helps Selleri partners to have access to financial products and services such as savings and investment products," said Jayant Kumar, CEO of Selleri.

Currently, Raiz Indonesia is one of two subsidiaries of Raiz Invest Limited which is listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) with the stock code RZI. With these developments, Raiz Indonesia is committed to be able to grow sustainably and continue to support the strength of the performance of its parent company.

George Lucas, Managing Director/Joint Group CEO of Raiz Invest Limited, said the company recorded the value of the investment products sold by the company (fund under management/FUM) of 1.02 billion Australian dollars. The company also recorded a 77.7 percent increase in the number of new customer accounts globally (Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia) in the last 12 months.

"Despite the tragic conflict in Ukraine, stability returned to the investment world in March and global stock markets rose during the month. Despite this, the Ukraine conflict, tighter monetary conditions, and rising costs of living globally are still customer concerns," Lucas said.