CEO of Satrix on ABSA money market fund and partnership with EasyEquities

Satrix CEO Helena Conradie joined Alec Hogg on the BizNews Power Hour to share her views on cryptocurrency as an asset or currency. Her response to Absa closing its money market fund, Conradie said that Satrix will definitely not close their money market fund.

Satrix CEO Helena Conradie on the possibility of a cryptocurrency ETF:

You never know – I’ll leave it there. It’s a very interesting topic, whether you call it a currency or asset. I’m sure all of us have read as much as we can about it. So let’s leave it as open as that.

On the partnership with EasyEquities:

First of all, I want to congratulate Charles and the team [at EasyEquities]. I think they’ve achieved excellent results and it’s well deserved. I think it’s an exciting example of when there’s a shared vision, how magic can really happen within a very short time. We saw them present at the conference in June 2015. They weren’t even a year old as a business. We started talking to them in June and we liked what we saw. It’s a shared ethos of the common values of access – democratising investment [and] financial inclusion.

We saw that immediately in this business as well. It was a leap of faith, but three months later, we launched SatrixNOW, which is a partnership between EasyEquities and us. After that, we never looked back. Sanlam then went to acquire a 30% stake in EasyEquities in 2017. So, very much a strategic commitment – not only a partnership.

Remember, we launched our Satrix Investment Plan in 2006 but at the beginning of 2020, in March – the weekend before lockdown – we moved all our clients from the Investment Plan (about 50,000 clients) to EasyEquities. Now, we have only one online investment platform and that is SatrixNOW. We’re very proud of our partnership with EasyEquities.

On the Satrix Money Market fund:

[We will] definitely not [close our fund down]. This caught us by surprise as well (news of Absa closing their Money Market fund) but our Money Market fund is actually part of what we call the Access Range. So, the Access Range is four different – almost like a starter pack – where you have a money market fund, a local component (the Satrix 40), an international component (Global MSCI World) and then a balanced fund.

We see it as crucial. It’s almost a parking space as well. If you think that you want to move your money out of MSCI and you want to investigate other options, this is the way to go. So we will definitely not close it down. I think it’s a very important part of your total portfolio.

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