Financially savvy: Pedestrians in the central business district of Singapore. Although more women are into investing, several brokerages here say their portfolio sizes remain smaller than those of their male counterparts. — Bloomberg
SINGAPORE: When the Covid-19 lockdowns hit Singapore in 2020, Grace Ooi spent many hours watching online videos by financial influencers while riding out the lockdown in her bedroom.
“I started seeing a lot of financial influencers, who would speak of how to do a technical analysis, or what a candlestick chart is.
“They were people who had already reached financial freedom, who would tell me to invest in stocks, and not be a slave to my money, but to make it work for me,” said Ooi, 24, an infrastructure consultant who was then an accountancy and business student at Nanyang Technological University.
She decided to put her learning into action.
After opening an account with online broker Tiger Brokers, she parked US$3,000 (S$3,900) in various stocks and funds, and has been holding on to her investment despite the recent tariff-induced market see-saw.
Ooi is not alone.
The Straits Times’ checks with six brokerage firms here found an increasing number of women opening securities accounts in the last few years.
From 2020 to 2024, Tiger Brokers saw an 18-fold increase in the number of female account holders in Singapore.
Moomoo, another brokerage firm, reported a 15-fold jump from 2021 to 2025.
Additionally, OCBC Securities, the stock trading platform of OCBC Bank, noted a similar trend.
“In 2024, the number of new accounts opened by women doubled compared (with) 2019,” said Wilson He, managing director of OCBC Securities.
For OCBC Securities, Phillip Securities, Moomoo and Endowus, their male-to-female client ratio has remained largely the same at three to two in recent years.
But for Tiger Brokers, the male-to-female ratio has changed from three to one to two to one between 2020 and 2024.
Another investment platform, StashAway, saw an even more drastic change from seven to three in 2019 to one to one in 2024.
Furthermore, past surveys by banks and investment firms have consistently shown that women are less confident about investing than men, and tend to hold more conservative assets such as cash, fixed deposits and insurance-linked investments.
But this is changing as Singaporean women are becoming more financially independent and digitally savvy, said Prof Sumit Agarwal from the NUS Business School.
“(Women) are taking control of their money – not just saving, but growing it,” said Agarwal, adding that this is a positive change as women live longer and often have caregiving roles.
It also helps that more modern online brokerage platforms have entered the Singapore market in recent years, with Syfe in 2019, Tiger Brokers in 2020 and Moomoo in 2021.
With their easy-to-use mobile interfaces, lower fees and the roll-out of more women-focused webinars, these platforms have lowered the barriers to entry for many budding female investors.
“No more intimidating brokerage offices – just a few taps and you are in the market,” said Agarwal.
Sheryl Chan, a young female investor, said platforms which feature pre-assembled portfolios also make things easier for rookie investors like her. — The Straits Times/ANN
