More women in Singapore taking the leap into investing

SINGAPORE – When the Covid-19 pandemic hit Singapore in 2020, Ms 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 finfluencers, 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 Ms 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.

Ms 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 eighteenfold increase in the number of female account holders in Singapore. Moomoo, another brokerage firm, reported a fifteenfold jump from 2021 to 2025.

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 Mr 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 3:2 in recent years.

But for Tiger Brokers, the male-to-female ratio has changed from 3:1 to 2:1 between 2020 and 2024. Another investment platform, StashAway, saw an even more drastic change from 7:3 in 2019 to 1:1 in 2024.

Growing confidence

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 Professor Sumit Agarwal from the NUS Business School.

“(Women) are taking control of their money – not just saving, but growing it,” said Prof 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 Prof Agarwal.

Ms Sheryl Chan, a young female investor, said platforms which feature pre-assembled portfolios also make things easier for rookie investors like her.

The 25-year-old research assistant said: “The good thing about Syfe is that for certain portfolios, you can move your money around.

“For example, if one portfolio isn’t doing so well, you can transfer your money to another portfolio at no cost.”

Ms Chan also appreciates the regular market summaries sent by the broker, which allow her to stay informed without having to track various news sites on her own.

Both Ms Chan and Ms Ooi also credited social media for democratising investment know-how, although they cautioned against following any “TikTok hype”.

“If you see a reel explaining a financial concept and are curious to learn more, go read a bit more about it or speak to a friend,” Ms Chan said.

Gender-based differences

Although more women are into investing, several brokerages here said their portfolio sizes remain smaller than those of their male counterparts.

Among Endowus’ local investors, the men’s portfolio size is 25 per cent larger than the women’s on average. For Moomoo, male investors’ portfolios are about 44 per cent larger than those of women investors.

Ms Echo Zhao, Moomoo’s Singapore country head, said: “This substantial difference reflects broader societal patterns in financial participation and wealth accumulation.

“While we have made progress in increasing female representation among investors, the portfolio size differential indicates there is still considerable work ahead in closing this gap.”

Women still tend to be less well-remunerated in Singapore’s workforce, with

full-time female employees earning 14.3 per cent less than their male counterparts

in 2023, according to a report by the Ministry of Manpower. This affords men greater disposable income for investment.

Ms Ooi said: “If you don’t have enough capital to start with, the gains will also be quite insignificant.”

Men also tend to stay longer in the workforce while women may leave to take on caregiving roles, leading to wealth disparities which may compound over time, said Prof Agarwal.

Additionally, male investors tend to invest in more high-risk, high-return assets such as options, several brokerage firms here told ST.

Female investors, on the other hand, generally opt for safer alternatives like funds.

“Women commit 27.9 per cent of their investments to funds versus 22.8 per cent for men – a substantial 5.1 percentage point difference,” said Ms Zhao of Moomoo.

Ms Nandini Joshi, deputy chief executive of StashAway, said women appear to be better at assessing their true risk profile.

She said: “This is important because having the right risk level makes it easier to stay invested through market volatility.

“In fact, our data shows that women in Singapore are 1.23 times more likely to stay invested than men, giving them a better chance to capture long-term returns.”

Mr Hugh Chung, chief investment officer at Endowus, saw a similar trend. Since 2019, just 5 per cent of Endowus’ female investors have redeemed their investments, compared with 8 per cent of men.

While it is important to invest, Ms Chan said people should not be “peer-pressured into investing” before they are ready.

“I strongly advise everyone to do their financial planning before considering investments, because that should really come after you settle everything else that you need in life,” she said.