The Douugh Ltd (ASX: DOU) share price is soaring this morning after news from the company that it can launch a wealth management service in the United States.
The news sent the Douugh share price up 16% in opening trade, a welcome rise after this week's fall of 8.8%, which included a significant drop yesterday. At the time of writing, shares in the AI-driven financial management app provider are up 12.9, trading at 18 cents.
Let's look closer at the announcement Douugh made this morning.
Wealth Jars
In today's release, the company announced it's been granted a registered investment advisor (RIA) licence by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Douugh's new RIA licence will allow the company to launch its Douugh Wealth products, including its anticipated crown jewel: Wealth Jars.
The company said Wealth Jars would initially allow users to invest money in custom-built managed portfolios. Its new RIA status has made it possible for the app to provide "Robo-Advice and Trading".
Douugh will ultimately expand Wealth Jars to enable users to invest in stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and cryptocurrency. It will eventually allow users to create separate investing accounts. For instance, a high-risk cryptocurrency investing account could sit alongside a low-risk investment account for retirement savings.
The company is set to launch Wealth Jars in the coming months. It will sit alongside Douugh's newly released features Autopilot and instant virtual card provisioning.
The company stated that, with its new US products underway and its acquisition of Goodments nearing, Douugh would soon be able to launch in Australia.
What did management say?
Douugh CEO Andy Taylor commented on the company's progress:
We continue to execute on our plan to successfully build out new and exciting features to rapidly strengthen the value proposition of the Douugh banking platform, to accelerate customer growth and activation. Overall deposits and card spend continue to build strongly in the US and the company looks forward to providing a quarterly update on platform metrics in due course.
The RIA status in the US allows for the rollout of Wealth Jars. With this feature we can target customers in the investing space who are currently using platforms like Betterment, Acorns and Stash with a holistic solution for their money management, focused on growing automated long-term wealth.
This should result in larger deposits balances being received and ultimately a higher penetration of customers paying in their salaries, which is our north star metric.
Douugh share price snapshot
So far, volatility has characterised 2021 on the ASX for the Douugh share price, with today's news being only the latest potential shakeup.
Year to date, the Douugh share price is down by 2.94%. But those who invested this time last year can rejoice, as it's up 150% over the last 12 months.
The company has a market capitalisation of $55.7 million, with approximately 655 million shares outstanding.
