For asset managers, selling funds through distribution platforms in Singapore is a highly competitive business. In most cases this leads to a focus on established products that are easy to distribute - although recent developments hint at the potential for innovation.
Regional Disparities in Product Demand
Crisil Coalition Greenwich’s 2025 Asian Intermediary Distributors Study highlights some interesting disparities between Singapore-based distributors and their regional counterparts when it comes to product popularity.
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For example, the distributors surveyed for the Asia-wide study exhibited significantly reduced enthusiasm for US equities, with more than a third of respondents projecting a significant decrease in flows.
Yet Killian Lonergan, head of distribution intelligence at BBH, says demand for growth exposure among investors in Singapore remains strong, particularly for global and US equity strategies.
“What sells best are recognisable, core exposures such as global large-cap, US equity and dividend-focused strategies,” he adds.
Similarly, while the Asian distributors surveyed by Crisil Coalition Greenwich projected a third consecutive year of significant net outflows from emerging markets debt, one of the most popular product categories for FSMOne Singapore (the business-to-consumer division of iFAST) is funds offering targeted sector or geographic exposure to emerging markets.
Innovation Takes a Back Seat
One area where there is greater consensus is the extent to which innovation is a factor in the launch of a fund. Respondents to the Asian Intermediary Distributors Study ranked product innovation below performance, investment capability, fund size, capability in the relevant market and investment process and only just ahead of information transparency in terms of importance.
Lonergan explains that the most popular products in Singapore are those that align with how distributors operate and how advisers construct portfolios.
Outcome-oriented funds that are operationally simple, easy to position and compatible with suitability frameworks consistently outperform more complex or niche strategies in commercial terms.
“In Singapore, funds don’t succeed because they are innovative - they succeed because they are easy to distribute,” he says. “Income-oriented funds continue to attract the most consistent inflows across private banks and retail platforms.
Global and Asian credit, investment grade bond funds and multi-asset income strategies remain staples and this demand is structural rather than cyclical.”
Income and Stability Drive Flows
According to Lonergan, investors in Singapore value income visibility and capital stability, while distributors favour products that can be positioned around outcomes rather than market timing.
Balanced and target risk multi-asset funds play an outsized role in Singapore distribution, simplifying portfolio construction, fitting neatly into suitability frameworks and scaling easily across client segments.
“Liquidity , transparency and suitability constraints continue to limit how far demand can move into more complex structures,” suggests Lonergan. “Thematic strategies such as technology, healthcare or sustainability typically generate strong initial interest but are often used tactically rather than as long-term holdings.”
Similarly, ESG-labelled funds are increasingly expected by distributors - particularly in retail channels - but ESG alone is rarely enough to drive sustained inflows.
Lonergan reckons share class structure is one of the most underappreciated factors in Singapore, noting that funds offering Singapore dollar-hedged share classes and regular income distributions tend to be far more commercially successful than otherwise identical strategies offered only in US dollar accumulation formats.
Timothy Liew, head of investments at OCBC, agrees that there is continued strong demand for income-focused products, driven in part by more cautious investor sentiment as a consequence of concerns around geopolitical and policy risks.
“Furthermore, bond yields continue to stay relatively elevated despite the Fed cutting rates, presenting attractive opportunities for income,” he says.
“Accordingly, we have seen strong inflows into global fixed income and dividend-focused equity funds. Predictable income from bonds helps mitigate volatility in the broader portfolio, while dividend stocks present a less volatile avenue to gain exposure to constructive growth.”
ETFs and Multi-Asset Momentum
Luke Lim, managing director at Phillip Securities, refers to the popularity of multi-asset portfolios and observes that traditional mutual funds remain in demand, especially when human advice shapes asset allocation.
He also refers to continued interest in ETFs. The latest data from SGX indicates that Singapore-focused ETFs saw record multi-asset inflows in 2025, with equity ETFs recording ten consecutive months of net inflows and investor interest in REIT ETFs picking up significantly in the second half of 2025.
The latter segment attracted net inflows of S$557 million (approximately $433.6 million), lifting total assets under management to a record high of S$1.65 billion ($1.285 billion) by the end of the year.
Amid heightened market volatility, money market funds have retained strong demand due to a combination of high liquidity and stable returns over the last few years, with a number of new funds hitting the market in 2024 and last year.
Tokenisation and New Structures Emerging
However, the relative unimportance of product innovation among fund distributors does not mean that new lines are not emerging.
Elaine Tan, head of asset owners & asset managers client lines for Asia Pacific, securities services, BNP Paribas, notes that tokenisation was one of the topics strongly linked to money market funds in Singapore in 2025.
“Fund managers have introduced digital units of money market funds on private permissioned blockchains such as tokenised share classes and on-chain funds,” she explains.
Tokenization creates competition between markets that were never able to compete before.
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A market in Singapore will compete with a market in New York, because settlement windows and local infrastructure no longer matter. pic.twitter.com/s6uDIyMlmj
In 2026, equity-focused products will be added to the equity market development programme launched by the Monetary Authority of Singapore in February 2025, expanding the retail investment horizon beyond large-cap stocks.
“In addition, the forthcoming long-term investment fund scheme is expected to further diversify retail asset allocation, potentially shifting a portion of retail capital from ultra short-term vehicles such as money market funds to long-term private asset exposure,” adds Tan.
Traditional actively managed funds remain the most popular products in Singapore but there is growing momentum around expanding access to private market funds, supported by the proposed long-term investment fund structure, according to Justin Christopher, head of Asia at Calastone.
“Looking ahead, increased tokenisation of fund products could further influence product popularity,” he concludes. “While adoption will naturally align with the pace of digital distribution, the continued growth of digital investment channels suggests an increasingly supportive environment for new product structures over time.”
