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or Mutia Fauzia, a 23-year-old fresh graduate from West Jakarta who only started working nine months ago, the idea of investing her money in mutual funds was once a distant wish that could only be a reality after years of saving up her monthly pay.

“Back then, when hearing about mutual fund investments, I always think about how much money I have to collect before I could start investing,” she told The Jakarta Post recently.

Things have changed.

Mutia is now one of the country’s 930,000 mutual fund investors, many of whom are young people who are now given the easiest possible way to invest their money through online platforms.

More than just offering convenience, online platforms have made mutual fund investments accessible for people like Mutia.

“These platforms enabled me to invest with only a few hundred thousand rupiah.”

According to the Financial Services Authority (OJK), the current number of mutual fund investors is more than twice the figure in 2016, which surged to 800,000 people last year.

The OJK has recorded Rp 493.65 trillion (US$33.26 billion) in the mutual fund industry as of August this year, a 21.4 percent increase from Rp 406.55 trillion in August last year.

OJK deputy director of investment supervision and development Halim Haryono said on Wednesday that the surge of new mutual fund investors had been triggered by the increasing popularity of online mutual funds.

In the past few years, online sales agents like Bareksa, IPOTFUND and Tanamduit have facilitated people to buy mutual funds online through their websites and apps without having face-to-face meetings with salespeople and filling out lengthy forms.

Moreover, e-commerce sites like Bukalapak, through its Bukareksa channel, and Tokopedia also teamed up with agents to help sell mutual fund products to their customers.

Aside from its convenience, these technology companies also offer a wide range of mutual fund products, ranging from money market, equity, fixed income and mixed funds, and enable investors to spend as little as Rp 10,000 (70 US cents) to encourage people to invest.

The perks of these online distribution channels are also felt by fund management firms such as Sucorinvest Asset Management. Director Jemmy Paul said the company had seen a significant increase in clients thanks to online agents and marketplaces.

“Our client base has grown about 30 percent from last year to about 10,000. Most of them are retail investors, thanks to these online channels.”

Despite being aware of other investment instruments like time deposit and stocks, Mutia still chooses to invest her money in mutual funds because of their high return and convenience.

Through mutual funds, she said, she could get a return of up to 30 percent annually, significantly higher than time deposit returns, which only offers an average annual return of 5.95 percent. Meanwhile, investing in stocks requires her to monitor their movement every minute, which she does not have the time or privilege to do.

However, the convenience of opening an online mutual fund account has its disadvantages.

When the Jakarta Composite Index (JCI) fell by 15.79 percent in July from its highest point of 6,689 earlier this year, all equity related instruments, including mutual funds, also hit rock bottom. The strengthening US dollar and equity market prompted foreign investors, who dominate more than 50 percent of Indonesia’s equity and bond market, to pull their money out of the country.

The weakening index worried Mutia as she monitored her investments’ performance in real time through an app on her smartphone.

“I saw my investment fall one by one and it made me anxious. But that’s the risk I have to take for investing in the capital market,” she said.

Halim said before the OJK allowed online platforms to sell the mutual funds, they had to comply with the 2008 law on information and electronic transactions as stipulated in the 2014 OJK circular on offline and online mutual fund subscriptions and redemptions procedures in order to prevent data theft.