WealthNavi's AuM exceed JPY 1.4trn, becomes MUFG subsidiary
WealthNavi, the provider of “WealthNavi,” the top Japanese robo-advisor in terms of assets under management and number of users, announced that assets under management reached 1.4 trillion yen as of January 23, 2025, approximately 8 years and 6 months since the official release in July 2016.
Also, MUFG's tender offer for WealthNavi's shares has resulted in the total number of voting rights in WealthNavi held by MUFG exceeding 90% of the number of the voting rights of all shareholders of WealthNavi. Therefore, an Extraordinary Shareholders’ Meeting to approve a Share Consolidation is not required.
“WealthNavi” automates all the wealth management processes to realize long-term investment with a globally diversified portfolio, using a financial algorithm based on the modern portfolio theory. Its functionality, transparency, and simple fees are highly evaluated, and the number of working family customers is increasing. WealthNavi is also acquiring new customers through their alliance partners with strong customer bases.
WealthNavi is characterized as a “technology-driven financial institution” with engineers and designers accounting for about half of the employees, and the firm strives to create services that are easy for anyone to use with fulfilling its fiduciary duties.
Main Features
1. Automates long-term and diversified wealth management
High-net-worth individuals and institutional investors around the world have been practicing “long-term, dollar-cost averaging and globally diversified” investment. “WealthNavi” automates the entire investment process by utilizing cutting-edge technology. “WealthNavi” allows customers to make long-term and diversified investments in 12,000 securities in about 50 countries through selected ETFs (Exchange-Traded Funds) based on the modern portfolio theory. All processes of wealth management, from asset allocation, trading of securities, automated deposits to rebalancing, are proceeded automatically.
The wealth management algorithm is published in a white paper and is available to anyone on the website of “WealthNavi.”
2. “WealthNavi” for busy working families
WealthNavi is serving working families, and “WealthNavi” users are mainly in their 20s to 50s. With risk tolerance assessment through answering five questions from a PC or smartphone, “WealthNavi” recommends an optimal wealth management plan for each customer and enables customers to check their assets at any time. Even busy working families can easily manage their assets for their comfortable retirement in their spare time.
3. Supports comfortable wealth management with various functions
A variety of functions such as “Robo-NISA” that leverages the NISA’s tax exemption merits while enabling the wealth management of long-term investment with a globally diversified portfolio, “Life planning tool” that supports the achievement of asset management goals, “Fractional ETF trading” that realizes an optimal portfolio even with a small amount of investment, and “AI wealth management advice” make it possible for customers to manage their assets comfortably. WealthNavi has obtained patents for “Automated deposits with rebalancing” and “Automatic tax optimization (DeTAX) function” for their core technologies.
4. Lower fee for New NISA accounts
The fee is 1% (1.1% including consumption tax) of the assets under management. If a user makes investments only through automated deposits in the NISA accounts, the weighted average annual management fee is between 0.63-0.67% (0.693-0.737% including tax) depending on risk tolerance level.
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