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With inflation rising, it’s a good time to take stock of our finances and see how we can cope with the increasing cost of living.
Oftentimes, we’re so busy with work and personal commitments that there’s no time to pore over our finances and other assets. Having a financial consultant might help…but not everyone has the time to have regular check-ins, or feel comfortable baring their assets (lol) to a stranger.
Thankfully, there are ways to get a great overview of our financial health, and gain insight on what the next steps are to secure our financial future, or what tweaks we can make for added efficiency on our own, with the help of a planning tool.
That’s the DBS NAV Planner, the bank’s digital advisory tool, that is integrated with SGFinDex.
In Nov 2022, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced an upgrade to SGFinDex — the ability to privately pull your insurance data (for your eyes and the organisation of your choice only!) for an even more comprehensive and consolidated view of your financial status. This is so that you can better identify any gaps and take the appropriate action(s) to close them.
Recently, SGFinDex has had a new upgrade! So let’s check out what’s new with SGFinDex, and some best kept secrets on how we can use the DBS NAV Planner and its new feature to help us fine tune our finances independently.
During this time of high inflation, every little bit helps.
SGFinDex: What is it and its recent developments
Before we go further, here’s a quick recap of what SGFinDex is, for those who are not too familiar.
According to MAS, SGFinDex, short for Singapore Financial Data Exchange, is “the world’s first public digital infrastructure to use a national digital identity and centrally managed online consent system to enable individuals to access, through applications, their financial information held across different government agencies and financial institutions.”
In short, it is an initiative by the government that streamlines for you, all of an individual’s financial information across financial institutions such as deposits with banks, investments with the CDP (Central Depository), IRAS, credit cards, loan balances (eg. HDB), and CPF.
The financial information you have with the government can basically be accessed (only by yourself, and by the involved entities, should you give them permission) via SGFinDex, so you have a central overview of your financial data and outstanding debts. The aim is to consolidate all this information to help Singaporeans with financial planning.
It does away with having to retrieve your financial data repeatedly, one-by-one from different organisations and allows you to log in with one national identity, your Singpass. For those of us who have been manually compiling and updating our financial data on a spreadsheet, this automation is a welcome move.
In its most recent upgrade, SGFinDex consolidates an individual’s insurance policies including coverage details (sum assured, hospitalisation benefits, fund details, projected policy value), so that it’s easier for people to get an overview of what they’re covered for, and address any protection gaps.
The participating insurers include: AIA, AXA, Great Eastern, Income, Manulife, Prudential and Singlife with Aviva.
Once you log in to SGFinDex with your Singpass, you have to give consent to retrieve your data, from the institution(s) of choice. This data is encrypted when it’s transmitted to your selected institution’s platform (eg. bank or insurer), where only you and the selected institution are privy to it.
Sync your SGFinDex with DBS NAV Planner
So what has all this got to do with DBS NAV Planner?
You can seamlessly sync your financial information from SGFinDex conveniently and securely via Singpass to your DBS NAV Planner. This lets you make full use of DBS NAV Planner to plan towards your financial goals, and not just the savings or investments you have with DBS.
What’s even better is that you don’t even have to be a DBS customer to use DBS NAV Planner!
Here’s how to make full use of DBS NAV Planner to plan and manage your finances:
DBS NAV Planner best kept secret #1: Fine tune your insurance coverage
If you have trouble remembering what insurance policies you have and how much you’re covered for, the latest addition of insurance policies to SGFinDex will help you with that.
SGFinDex includes insurance information on:
- Product type (life, health, critical illness, etc)
- Policy details (maturity date, surrender value)
- Coverage details (plan type, sum insured, hospitalisation limit, etc)
- Premium details (amount, frequency, payment terms, total premium paid, etc)
- Payout details (total payout amount, frequency, etc)
- Fund details (projection, guaranteed value at maturity, etc)
This means you (and only you) can see all your coverage AND premiums in one place so you’ll never forget and won’t blur blur buy new insurance policies that overlap existing ones and end up paying higher premiums than you need.
Existing DBS NAV Planner users who have used SGFinDex before can now add insurance data to the info you’ve pulled before! Plus, it is even more effortless to get insurance advice on DBS NAV Planner.
With a more comprehensive overview, you can make use of DBS NAV Planner to get unbiased advice and objective insights to help you understand whether your coverage is sufficient, or how much more you may need.
For instance, if you have dependants, DBS NAV Planner can help you calculate how much insurance you need to take care of your child/ren in the event of your death. It’s quick and easy and best of all, you can do it on your own.
Beyond just consolidating data on one platform, DBS NAV Planner goes one step further to help you with your next step of financial planning.
It also helps to identify and prioritise your insurance needs depending on your life stage as we definitely can’t purchase all of the policies we need at once. Neither can we predict what future coverage we might need due to our evolving commitments.
At least you know for now that you are sufficiently covered. So in case you encounter some pushyfolks trying to convince you to buy a certain type of insurance that you actually may not need (or own already), you have this tool to back you up and to help you be more confident in conversations with wealth-planning managers or financial consultants.
What’s more? In case you do need a new policy, DBS NAV Planner can send you recommendations to plug coverage gaps. Some of these can be immediately purchased via DBS digibank.
Bonus points if you’re a DBS Multiplier Account holder as you can take advantage of this to earn higher interest rates in another category.
DBS NAV Planner best kept secret #2: Be your own FIRE fighter
If you want to achieve FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early), the DBS NAV Planner can help with that too.
Hardcore FIRE fighters aim to save up to 70% of their annual income so that they have the financial freedom to retire early. While that is quite an uphill battle for many of us, a less extreme form of FIRE is to make sure we have enough for retirement. But how does one truly know what’s enough? And many of us fear we don’t have enough…
One good gauge is the Map Your Money function through the retirement planning feature on DBS NAV Planner, which can estimate if you’re on track for life’s major financial goals such as retirement.
It gives you an insight into your cashflow projection as far as 50 years ahead, AND can also track your progress towards achieving your retirement goal, whether it’s FIRE or not.
Depending on which stage of life you’re at — whether you’re planning to buy a house or looking to make large investments or even budgeting for home renovations — your finances will be tracked through SGFinDex and you get an overview of your progress to keep you motivated or give you the push to change things up.
Now it’s even more holistic with the insurance data you pulled via SGFinDex for a more accurate view of your retirement finances (maybe you have some payouts from insurance endowment plans?) — it means you need even less to achieve your long-term goals!
What’s more: You can also stress test your financial plan with DBS NAV Planner to ensure it’s robust enough!
DBS NAV Planner best kept secret #3: Digital investment advisor
For those who are new to investing or don’t have time to maintain their portfolio, DBS NAV Planner can also help with your investments.
Launched last year, the Make Your Money Work Harder (MYMWH) digital advisory feature provides investment advice and product recommendations after holistically assessing an individual’s risk profile, investment goals, investment knowledge, preferred investment tenure, assets and liabilities, as well as cashflow.
With this feature, you get unbiased advice on what to invest in based on a digital algorithm that assesses your goals and risk appetite to recommend suitable products. And once again, you can seamlessly proceed with the investment process through the DBS app (remember, this can help you earn DBS Multiplier Account bonus interest).
To utilise this feature, all you have to do is answer a few simple questions and DBS NAV Planner can provide investment advice right down to what unit trust and ETF is right for you.
Map Your MoneyDBS NAV Planner, along with the data it pulls via SGFinDex (including your other bank accounts, insurance, investments, etc.) can help you manage your money. Use it to create financial goals for retirement or savings, track how well you’re doing through your savings and spending, outstanding loans, filling the gaps on insurance coverage, and basically any financial transactions you need to undertake. Within the DBS NAV Planner, you can also see what premiums or payments are due so that you can better budget your cashflow for the month. This means you don’t get a sudden shock that an annual lump sum has been taken out for a policy you’ve completely forgotten about, and haven’t budgeted enough that month. While it does take some time for the initial setup, once you’ve connected SGFinDex, you can see all the exact inflows and outflows on your DBS NAV Planner dashboard. What’s more, you only need to pull the data from SGFinDex once every month or so — just in time for your monthly budgeting! |
DBS NAV Planner: Quickstart guide to pulling your SGFinDex data
- Log in to your DBS digibank app & click the Plan tab at the bottom
- Connect to SGFinDex via Singpass to retrieve your financial information
- Now you have an overview of your financial health!
Now you have an overview of your financial health!
This article is meant for information only and should not be relied upon as financial advice. Before making any decision to buy, sell or hold any investment or insurance product, you should seek advice from a financial adviser regarding its suitability.