The problem with shallow financial inclusion, according to Lee Junxian

In 2008, Lee Junxian and his partner were running a Japanese restaurant in Singapore’s central business district. The numbers, at least at a glance, looked reasonable. But day after day, money was leaking out faster than it came in.

“Every dollar burned felt like something I could have used to support my family,” recalls GoodWhale’s chief product officer. “It wasn’t just a business loss, it was personal.”

What stayed with him was not only the financial damage but the emotional fog that came with it. He was educated. He had read the books. Yet, he felt unsure and ashamed, financially stuck in the dark. The experience cracked a belief he hadn’t questioned before: that access to information naturally leads to better decisions.

That fissure became the starting point for GoodWhale, the financial education platform he later co-founded in 2022 — not as another investing app, but as a response to what he now sees as a problem hiding inside modern finance.

“Shallow financial inclusion”

Singapore is often held up as a global success story, with high financial inclusion, strong Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita and a sophisticated banking infrastructure. Yet, Lee argues, the lived reality beneath that surface tells a different story.

“Seventy-seven per cent of adults here experience financial anxiety,” he says. “Sixty per cent live paycheck to paycheck, which is alarmingly higher than our regional average of 48 per cent, and 54 per cent do not have emergency funds.”

The issue, in his view, is not availability, but what comes with it. Lee calls this “shallow financial inclusion”: a situation in which people have credit cards, finance blogs, or Buy Now, Pay Later schemes at their fingertips but lack the understanding to manage them effectively.

In that context, access becomes “a double-edged sword”, one that can just as easily lead to debt and confusion as it can to freedom.

That idea anchors GoodWhale’s thinking. “Money is relational and omnipresent in our lives,” Lee says, not something people think about only when they invest, which is why he believes financial literacy deserves to be treated with seriousness rather than as a niche skill.

Confidence is not the same as competence

One of the hardest tensions Lee grapples with is whether financial platforms are making people better or simply bolder. “Confidence without competence leads to overconfidence,” he says. “But competence without confidence leaves people stuck.”

GoodWhale tries to hold both in view. On one side are habits such as diversification, savings behaviour and risk exposure. On the other hand, it is how users feel about their finances. Are they less anxious? Do they feel equipped to make decisions? “These things take time and patience,” Lee notes. “Like going to the gym.”

The goal, he stresses, is not to turn users into traders: “It’s about building the kind of everyday confidence that lasts, especially in moments of uncertainty.”

Behavioural finance has long shown that understanding theory does not prevent poor decisions under pressure, and Lee agrees that this is where many education-first approaches fall short. “Knowing the theory doesn’t stop you from panic selling,” he states.

This is where GoodWhale’s design choices come in. The platform avoids stock tips and urgency-driven nudges, focusing instead on habits and reflection. The Academy helps users understand core financial ideas and trade-offs.

From there, the Buddy, an artificial intelligence (AI) companion, supports small pauses and awareness, while the Community offers a longer-term counterweight to impulsive decisions.

“When you are stressed, you revert to your training, or you look to your peers,” Lee says. Surrounded by people who practise long-term stewardship rather than short-term speculation, users are less likely to make poor decisions under pressure.

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AI plays a supporting role in making this learning more personal and timely. But Lee is careful about where that support stops. “We don’t tell people what to buy or sell,” he says. “We focus on helping them ask better questions, think more clearly, and make informed decisions based on their own values and priorities.”

Choosing patience over urgency

That restraint also shapes how the platform defines success. Lee is wary of financial products that rely on constant engagement or habit-forming design. “A good financial app shouldn’t be addictive,” he says. “It should be useful when needed, and invisible when not. Our job is to support good decisions, not to drive activity for its own sake.”

Accepting that approach often means moving more slowly in a market that tends to reward speed and noise.

Building a company around restraint, Lee admits, is not the obvious path in fintech, especially when others are “blitz-scaling on hype”. But the funding slowdown has given the team space to stay the course. Lee and his team keep returning to what he describes as a simple belief: that sustainable wealth comes from clarity, not noise.

When it comes to what matters more — users feeling more in control or making demonstrably better decisions — Lee does not pretend there is no trade-off. If forced to choose, he would prioritise control. “Because that’s the foundation for everything else.”