Three ways to overcome investing inertia

THE Covid-19 pandemic has affected the lives and livelihoods of many people globally. In Singapore, its impact on the Singapore economy has been broad and significant. Nevertheless, there are valuable insights which we can glean from this crisis to help us plan for a more secure financial future.

To examine the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on our customers' financial health, we recently initiated a research series "DBS NAV Financial Health", which leveraged our database of 1.2 million retail customers at an aggregated and anonymised level. The inaugural report in this series highlighted the risks faced by those who are financially unprepared during the current pandemic, in terms of their lack of savings and their inability to make their money work harder.

When it comes to investing, some first-time investors can be confounded by regulatory requirements - such as the measurement of knowledge, financial data or risk profiling - for different investment products. This is compounded by multiple settlement schemes, as well as the personal investing hurdles faced by retail investors which include a lack of discipline and focus.