Managed by Good Design Australia since 1958, Australia’s Good Design Awards promotes the very best in design, innovation and creativity at a national and international level.
This year, the entries were judged across seven categories: product design, service design, digital design, communication design, architectural design, business model design as well as social innovation.
According to the judges “Acorns is the fastest growing savings and investment app in Australia now. It allows people to round-up their daily purchases and automatically invest the change into a commission-free diversified portfolio of ETFs offered by the world’s top asset managers.
The app was built with natural human behavior in mind to inspire realist investment strategies.”
Acorns allows users to invest their virtual spare change into an investment portfolio, automatically rounding up transactions to the nearest dollar when purchasing on a credit or debit card. The app then allocates the spare change into one of five self-selected diversified portfolios.
George Lucas, Managing Director of Acorns Australia says there has been a huge interest from the Australian market with over 85,000 signups for the app.
Created to disrupt the traditional stereotypes of the investment industry, Acorns gives first-time players in the stock market an easy way to get started.
“The ethos behind Acorns is using technology to make it easier for people to save and invest. The app is perfect for those who know little about investing or don’t know how to start. It’s about levelling the playing field and opening the market up, particularly to younger generations. It is also about educating people about the benefits of regular small investments into the market”.
Users select one of five portfolios that range from conservative to aggressive portfolios, and pay an annual flat fee of AUD$15.00 for accounts holding under AUD$5,000, less than brokerage charged by many brokers.
The Acorns investment committee includes world-renowned Nobel prize winning economist, Dr. Harry Markowitz, the father of modern portfolio theory. Information obtained by the app is also stored securely on a remote server with bank-level security and data encryption. Nothing is stored on the device, so users need not worry if it is lost or stolen.
Australia is the first country to receive the app outside of the U.S., being launched by a joint venture between Instreet Investments Limited and the U.S. start-up Acorns Grow, Inc.