Why I still like FSMOne (2024 edition)

 

Internet forums have remarked on the appearance of new financial youtubers (labelled cleverly by someone as influenzas) who seem to be pushing affiliate links and trying to get people to sign up to one of the new broker-custodians. This may give the new investor the impression that these new brokers are the only game in town when there are actually some pretty good local platforms.

As I was reviewing my FSMOne account holdings and editing some RSP orders, this was a good opportunity to record my 2024 thoughts on FSMOne. I admit that when they imposed platform fees, I thought that they were goners, as the need for platform fees suggested that they had some inefficient cost structure whereas platforms like Poems were able to manage fine without platform fees.

Product Availability

When I talk about product availability, I am talking in terms of products that I find worth investing in. In 2024, the product offering is pretty good but not perfect:

• HKSE ETFs
• US ETFs
• LSE ETFs (GBP only) 26/3 Edit: USD ETFs now available
• Low cost unit trusts
• Bonds

ETF RSP Fees

FSMOne has been offering 0% commission RSP on selected HKSE, US, and SG ETFs for several years. Here's my invoice from a recent $900 RSP into a HK ETF. The fees were HKD 5.93. So this is really a great deal. More significantly, investors can choose 1 of 4 days every month for the RSP transaction. Previously, all the orders were done on the 8th of the month. For less liquid ETFs, it seems that FSMOne's market order results in a price spike - since everyone "knew" that FSMOne was going to place a market order on the 8th, it was easy to front run the order. Spreading the RSP volume across 4 different days helps.  

26/3 Edit

USD ETFs listed on LSE are available but not part of the 0% RSP Promotion.

No unit trust platform fees for Diamond Tier

 

When you reach Diamond tier at 500k, there are no more platform fees for unit trusts! You can reach Diamond tier by placing cash in their 3%+ cash management account and via the AUM of your ETFs and SG shares (for which they are no platform fees)

If you are buying only low expense ratio unit trusts, it actually means that FSMOne Diamond might actually be 'cheaper' than Endowus because the Endowus 'rebate' is minimal for low-cost funds but you still have to pay the Endowus platform fee. At time of writing, Endowus platform fee is 0.5% for $200k-$1m AUM.

Finally, since the webpage says no platform fee for unit trust for Diamond, this implies that the platform fee for bond is still applicable, so no free lunch for bonds.

 

Vanguard's Ireland domiciled Vanguard Global and Vanguard US 500 funds are pretty reasonable with ongoing charges of 0.18% and 0.10% respectively. The minimum initial investment is US$1,000. I am planning to buy some instead of holding all my Vanguard World in Interactive Brokers. Note - you have to fill in an accredited investor declaration before buying.

Auto-sweep accounts of US$ and S$

The yield for the US$ and S$ auto-sweep accounts (i.e. cash management accounts) are 4.7% and 3.2% at time of writing. Pretty decent place to park some spare cash compared to the pitiful interest rates in Standard Chartered- I use SCB trading a lot so I have a 'float' of US$/S$ that is earning hardly any interest. (Note: cash management accounts are not SDC protected).

Conclusion: Will be increasing my holdings in FSMOne

FSMOne is a pretty good platform. One is always worried that FSMOne may revise its pricing structure but so far, the 0% comms ETF RSP has been around for a long time and so has the platform fee waiver for Diamond tier. If these remain, FSMOne is a great choice as a broker-custodian.