Ceridwen Choo, CEO of DCS Innov: “Only invest when you are comfortable losing”

While many believe that starting early in one’s investment journey offers a compounding advantage, Ceridwen Choo, CEO of DCS Innov, shares a different perspective: “I don’t think it’s necessary to start investing at a very young age.”

That is because she focused on setting money aside for goals, and safeguarded her financial needs. Learning how to maximise her earnings was something the 40-something-year-old picked up from a young age. Born to an air stewardess and a businessman, she was mostly cared for by a babysitter, a feisty and independent 73-year-old grandmotherly figure who lived in a three-room HDB flat in the mature Tanglin Halt estate.

As a result, she shuttled between two homes – two vastly different environments – for the first decade of her life. Ceridwen recalls watching her babysitter divide her earnings into tins. Other than daily needs, these were for savings goals, such as home renovation; another for earning interest, and most importantly, one for rewards such as Moroccan coffee and restaurant meals.

“While she was frugal, she also showed me that at the end of the day, you must reward yourself because you did earn your money,” she says.

As soon as she was of legal age to do so, Ceridwen thumbed the Yellow Pages to look for part-time work. Her first gig was at a Japanese restaurant, where she earned $4.50 an hour. “That to me was a way to financial independence,” she recalls.

And she continued to work as she studied. This goal-oriented mindset extended into her career. She earned a degree in business studies with a specialisation in hospitality and tourism, before starting her career organising events at the Singapore Tourism Board in 2000. There, working with sponsors, including banks, sparked her interest in the finance industry.

One of her former supervisors later joined DBS, and brought her on board to manage card promotions. She continued in a similar role at HSBC, before expanding her horizons beyond Singapore with Mastercard, where she eventually led the credit card portfolio for the entire AsiaPacific (APAC) region.

In 2022, Ceridwen went on to lead payment innovation at DCS and its entire rebranding, and now provides the strategic direction for DCS Innov, a new business arm set up by DCS to foster business innovation and co-create new payment solutions that aim to integrate seamlessly across different facets of the payment ecosystem.

A big believer in innovation, Ceridwen and her team have led initiatives that include #cardyourassets, which allows DCS cardholders to increase their card spend limits with assets via bank transfers, and the conversion of digital assets in the crypto space such as stablecoins USDC, USDT, as well as cryptocurrencies BTC and ETH.

She also led the launch of DCS Tokens, the first payment token pegged to an equivalent value in USD and SGD launched by a financial institution in Singapore.

Ceridwen shares more about what her own “money tins” look like, why she believes in not investing until she has excess cash, and what she thinks about the crypto space.

What’s your take on investing?

For me, I started a family at a fairly young age, which came with many commitments. You need to consider your life stage, as well as your needs and wants. I believe that real investment for returns should only happen when you are comfortable setting aside money that could potentially be lost one day. It should also be when I have the time to learn about what I’m investing in. Only then will I start to invest.

Did you buy any financial products? What were they?

When I landed my first job, I bought a $5,000 investment-linked plan from a close university friend who had become a financial adviser. They told me I was their first client, so I wanted to show my support. It turned out to be the worst investment I’ve ever made in terms of returns. Today, it’s worth maybe $8,000 – just sitting there. Just before I got married at 25, I also bought an insurance cum endowment product from my cousin, who is a financial adviser. Recently, I just redeemed it, and it only doubled to $10,000 – that’s after 20 years.

When I had kids, I prioritised health insurance. To me, that’s also a financial decision, because if anyone falls ill, it could place a significant strain on our finances. Even if money was tight, I would have used my last dollar to buy health insurance. To me, that was an investment.

Tell us more about your biggest loss

During the Covid-19 lockdown, I finally took the chance to invest in a masterclass on stocks and shares. I was intrigued because that was when I truly started to understand the stock market. In the past, I had only invested in local bluechip stocks, such as banks. They were expensive and didn’t offer high returns, but they were safe. After attending the masterclass, I invested about $50,000, but lost around 20 per cent in value. Some Asian ETFs and stocks didn’t perform as expected.

That said, I learnt from the experience. It didn’t help that, post-Covid, much of the previous investment knowledge no longer applied. That’s when I realised that people were teaching stocks and shares, but at the time, no one truly understood the full impact Covid would have.

What does your financial portfolio look like now?

I have a balanced mix of term and fixed deposits, along with funds where I invest a set amount each month – essentially functioning as my savings. Currently, I have three active funds: one focused on renewable energy, another on tech (since that’s the industry I’m in), and a third on high-growth sectors like AI.

My stocks and shares portfolio is self-managed. I now invest heavily in the US market, trading in and out of stocks like Google, Amazon and Apple based on market movements. In Singapore, my investments are primarily in bank stocks, with DBS being my largest holding. I also invest in REIT logistics, storage, as well as the data centres, as I believe cloud services are integral to today’s economy.

Additionally, my Singapore stocks have paid consistent dividends ranging from 3 to 5 per cent in the past few years. Crypto, my highest-risk investment, makes up 5 per cent of my portfolio. For my long-term financial security, I have lump-sum endowment plans set to mature successively at 55, 60 and 65.

Tell us more about your foray into cryptocurrency

At the end of the day, crypto remains cryptic. It’s difficult to determine the basis for its value increases. For example, today, one Bitcoin is worth $120,000, but how much of that value can be realised for (real-world) cash, aka fiat?

To me, there is still a level of ambiguity. However, the introduction of Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) for Bitcoin and Ethereum has, in a way, legitimised crypto by integrating it into the traditional financial ecosystem. I only gained in-depth exposure to crypto about two years ago, even though it has been around for much longer.

When I first started exploring it, I was working on issuing Singapore’s first payment token – DCS token (DUSD). It was a steep learning curve that inadvertently threw me into the crypto space albeit at a rather superficial level, but enough to know basic operations, including risks of the business. It wasn’t until last year that I began investing in crypto. As with any investment, I believe it’s crucial to first understand the business behind it before committing financially.

Ceridwen’s investment journey in numbers

• 7 The age she remembers learning about money management concepts from her babysitter
• 14 The age she started earning her own money
• $5,000 The amount she spent on her first financial product, an investment-linked plan
• 10% The percentage of her income she puts into her savings
• 25 The age she bought her first property, an HDB flat
• 2020 The year she really started learning about stocks and shares
• $10,000 Her biggest loss in an ETF listed on the HK exchange and an Asian fund
• 6-figures The largest amount of money she’s put into investment, a term deposit