Dear investors,

Our mission is to democratize wealth management and make it accessible to everybody. By providing a fully automated end-to-end wealth management service online, WealthNavi is helping working families in Japan build wealth for a more comfortable retirement.

A personal story

One Christmas holiday, I happened to notice that my American parents-in-law were nearly 10 times as wealthy as my Japanese parents, though they were both from working class families and were similar in age. The huge gap in their financial wealth was primarily driven by the fact that my in-laws had been making investments with a diversified portfolio for 30 years while my Japanese parents kept almost all of their money in bank deposits. What if my parents had been able to make similar investments since the 1980s when they were young？ This is why I founded WealthNavi in 2015.

Emerging need for working families to build their own wealth

In the past, under the Japanese life-time employment system, the best way to prepare for retired life was to join a large company straight after high school or college and work there for over 30 years. Then, the resulting lump sum retirement bonus alongside state and corporate pensions were enough to support life after retirement. As a result, more than half of personal financial assets in Japan are in bank deposits.

Recently, however, the life-time employment system has been coming to an end. In addition, the aging population and increased longevity are making the pension system less sustainable.

Serving working families with fully automated, transparent wealth management services

To meet the needs of busy working families in Japan, WealthNavi provides fully automated, end-to-end wealth management services. With our service, working families can build and maintain a long-term, globally diversified investment portfolio, regardless of their size of financial assets or whether they have investment experience or know how. Most of our customers are using the automated deposit plan, which regularly transfers cash from their savings accounts to their WealthNavi accounts to help them to meet their long-term investment goals.

We firmly believe that transparency is essential for building trust, especially with automated investing. That's why we clearly visualize the risks associated with investment, especially the worst-case scenario risks. Our investment algorithm is published in a whitepaper. No commission or hidden spread is charged, and all the fees are clearly stated.

By providing fully automated and transparent services, we are serving working families. Around 90% of WealthNavi users are in their 20s-50s. Most of our customers have investment experience, but our customer base is gradually shifting to those with little or no investment experience. Moving forward, WealthNavi will try to support more working families regardless of their level of investment experience.

Building a truly integrated team with diverse backgrounds

We believe that only a team that truly integrates engineers and financial experts can deliver high-quality, innovative financial services. We also believe that we need to promote diversity within our team to generate new ideas and drive innovation. These principles stem from how WealthNavi was founded in 2015.

Working for Japan's finance ministry for 9 years and McKinsey's financial services practice for 5 years, I had a strong finance background, but no technology experience. Thus, I struggled to build a team when I decided to become an entrepreneur.

After going to coding school and building the WealthNavi prototype by myself, I learned a very important lesson – there is a large cultural gap between engineers and financial experts. By being able to bridge this gap, I could build a team where engineers and financial experts could truly collaborate and build a stronger, more innovative service.

As WealthNavi's team size grew along with our business, many professionals with diverse personal and professional backgrounds joined our team. There is one thing in common – we joined WealthNavi to help working families build wealth for a more comfortable retired life.

As a truly integrated team, we, WealthNavi, will continue to partner with our shareholders and business partners, improve and expand our wealth management platform, and make it accessible for everybody. Thank you for your support for our mission.

Kazuhisa Shibayama
Founder & CEO