Startup Review: Wealth.ng Could Help you Invest in Stocks but it Lacks Foreign Investment Options

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Wealth.ng is a fintech product that helps people invest their money. The mobile app makes stocks and other investment opportunities available to users from its dashboard. I checked it out to see how functional, easy-to-use and well-stocked it is in terms of its offerings.

I will be taking you through the app, and tell you exactly what it offers compared to what if claims to offer.

Investment features

I set up the mobile app on my phone and filled in the necessary details. Like most fintech apps, Wealth.ng requires that you input your BVN and bank account details as well as verify both of them. Once they are verified, you can proceed to check out the features of the app.

Signing up was a simple process as only the essential details were required. When the app opened, the dashboard was uncluttered and presented the available features.

From the dashboard, you can select investments options from the ones available for the day. You could purchase as many as you want. The transaction option gives a detailed recap of the cash flow through your account while the portfolio contains details of any stocks you have purchased.

The marketplace is where the securities available are listed. Investment options include stocks, fixed income and agriculture. As at the time of this review, stocks including those of First Bank, Union Bank, UBA, Dangote Sugar, Unilever, and Guinness were trading on the app.

A downside is that the app indicates that users will be able to trade stocks of international companies like Nike, Apple, Google and Microsoft from the app, but there are none such stocks available.

The available options on the platform are quite limited. Responding to this limitation, Wealth.ng said it “only places shares that are on the premium board of the NSE on its platform.” Notwithstanding, these two downsides limit the options that investors can select from.

Transaction charges and fees

I selected two different stocks to invest in and added one each from the agriculture and fixed income section as well. I selected 150 units of Nestle stocks at N1,175 and 1,500 units of Access Bank stock at N6.35. The agriculture stock was sold at N50,000 per unit and treasury bills at N10,000.

The transaction charges for the stocks followed the same pattern while the agriculture and fixed-income investments seem to have no transaction cost attached.

My calculations, using the commission charged for the two stocks and the total amount payable, showed that Wealth.ng charges approximately 1.21% as commission. The other charges are split among VAT, SEC fees, Stamp Duties, Trade alert fee, and ‘consideration’.

The ‘consideration’ is like an emergency fund charged in case the stock price changes in the market. If the trade is completed at a price lesser than the market price, the company returns the balance to the individual’s cash balance.

Startup Review: Wealth.ng Could Help you Invest in Stocks

Competitors

Trove finance is one of the fintech startups that also helps Nigerians invest in international stocks. It was started in 2018 and has secured 2 funding rounds to expand its business. Past user testimonial shows that Trove’s users have traded stocks of foreign companies such as Tesla and Uber.

Another competitor in the investment space is Chaka, which allows Nigerians to invest in US and Nigerian stocks with as low as N1,000. Other competitors include Afrinvest, Investment one, and Payday investor.

Wealth.ng was founded in 2019 by Sankore Investment, a wealth management firm that provides advisory, brokerage, fund management and other investment services. The app has had more than 10,000 downloads on the Playstore with an additional unspecified number on the App store.

The app provides easy access to Nigerian stocks, and getting around it is straightforward. The only major downside is that it does not have many international stocks for users even though that is one of its strong marketing points.


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