The Elphinstone US investment product – delivered through the eponymous Elphinstone app – offers automated investment advice to residents of Pakistan for investments in capital markets in the United States. The company offers advised portfolios in addition to providing clients with access to the ability to make self-directed investment decisions and trades.
For the advised portfolios, the company asks its users to specify their preference for conventional or Islamic modes of investing, with the latter then being restricted purely to investments that are compliant under Shariah investing principles (explained below).
Each client is then presented with a sliding scale that represents the trade-off between risks and returns, and clients are advised that the longer the duration for which they are saving, the more capacity they have to take on risk, and the shorter the duration for which they are saving, the less capacity they have to take on risk.
The portfolios consist of two components: a fixed income component and an equity component. Essentially, the higher the level of risk you take, the higher the proportion of equities in your portfolio. The lower the risk, the more your exposure to fixed income / money market funds.
The auto-invest function works entirely by utilizing ETFs.
- Conventional equities: we invest in a mix of five ETFs that invest in the S&P 500 index.
- Islamic equities: we invest in a mix of two ETFs that invest in the Islamic components of the S&P 500 index (259 out of the 500 conform to Shariah compliance standards).
- Conventional fixed income / money market: We invest in five ETFs that invest in short-dated or variable rate US Treasury bills and bonds
- Islamic fixed income: We invest in an ETF that is invested in investment-grade US dollar-denominated sukuks
