Month: December 2018

The Human Wealth Manager is a very precious resource, and often extremely expensive,  with median salaries of well over 100K (Census data collected by WSJ). In such a scenario private wealth management firms often tend to overwork and spread thin their accounts, in some firms, it was found that Wealth managers were juggling between 200 to 500 portfolios in a work week. This led to many wealth managers working well over 80 – 100 hour work weeks.

However pulling such long work hours often mean that Wealth Managers often become less efficient and often develop depression, anxiety, immune disorders that affect their quality of life, efficiency, and their decision-making capabilities.

How can Artificial Intelligence make a difference?

AI is helping Wealth Management firms optimize their Wealth Management process and reduce the strain on Human Wealth managers by automating a lot of the research, onboarding, goal setting, and operations that goes into wealth management.

Leading Investment technology firms such as Valuefy are creating sophisticated Wealth Management platforms and Robo advisory services that crunch through Terabytes of data in seconds compared to hours of manual research. Big data analysis is helping Wealth Management professionals create better models and strategies for their firms by factoring in more strategies and variables and thereby tempering the tendency to make biased decisions.

These platforms are also helping Human Managers organize their portfolio lifecycle better by leveraging real time insights. This helps Wealth Managers at large firms managing 200+ portfolios a day dedicate their attention to macro and micro trends and take corrective action or rebalancing if necessary.

Using these big data platforms can also help Wealth Managers have data driven and nuanced conversations with their clients. It can help clients feel at ease and assuaged to have hard data backing up their investment strategies. Overall it helps Wealth Managers to be proactive and respond to trends quickly, leaving customers feeling more valued.

The major benefit, however, is that it helps Wealth Managers free up their time by almost 20%. This translates to almost a whole day a week, which can be better utilised to reevaluate strategies, cement relationships, prospecting and more rather than day to day portfolio management operations.

To learn more about how AI can help your firm reach peak efficiency, set up a free consultation today – Set up a Demo

Are human advisors being edged out by the Robo Advisory revolution? That is the question that’s troubling the wealth management industry moving into 2019. The future of wealth management seems to be in a state of flux, human advisors are apprehensive about the developments in Robo advisory, they aren’t sure whether Robo advisors are here to help them, supplement them or replace them entirely.

The answers aren’t clear at this point, however, Roboadvisory is forcing the industry to take notice and modernize to stay relevant. Roboadvisory is taking the wealth management space by storm, catering to millennials, these firms are mobile first, customer friendly, and transparent. They are a vast improvement on the opaque and inaccessible fashion in which traditional wealth management firms operate.

Millennial investors are curious about how their money is being invested, and Roboadvisory is helping them gain control and confidence over their finances. Investors are increasingly choosing Robo advisors as they are more accessible (Most platforms have web and mobile apps), more streamlined, and offer more value, especially to those with uncomplicated financial goals and needs.

What does this mean for traditional wealth management firms?

Traditional wealth management firms need to embrace the changes that are taking hold of the industry and adapt if they want to survive. Artificial Intelligence is helping temper the decision-making process, helping investors derisk their investment strategy in favour of a more holistic and data-driven approach. AI insights that are culled out from terabytes of data can help both professional advisors as well as laymen investors, make better decisions.

It may not be the solution for investors with complex needs and larger estates, but it can help those who cannot afford the high fees charged by traditional wealth management firms (around 1%-2% of AUM). Also, the low minimum asset requirements on Roboadvisory platforms (around $1000 – $10,000) as compared to high requirements of traditional firms ($100,000) make Robo platforms a lucrative option for beginners.

Robo-advisory in their current form is catering largely to DIY investors and supplementing traditional advisors, leading to a High Touch approach (Mix of tech and human advisory). Adaptable wealth management firms stand to benefit from this expansion of their customer universe, they can bolster their bottom line from being able to serve both small-scale investors as well as High Networth Individuals with complicated investment goals.

Integrating Roboadvisory into their roster of services is helping banks and wealth management firms free up valuable advisor time. Advisor portals and apps are helping clients gain more transparency on the state of their portfolios, in turn helping clients and human advisors have more insightful conversations about financial goals and strategies.

An ecosystem where Roboadvisory platforms and Human advisors coexist will inspire an ecosystem of trust and collaboration by reducing information asymmetry that plagues traditional investing. Investors across the board will benefit from being able to monitor and assess the state of their own finances in real time.

The human touch can never be eliminated as algorithms cannot assuage investor’s fears or offer solutions for complex needs such as succession/estate planning, elder care, tax and healthcare planning. However, technology can help automate and streamline a large portion of conventional financial planning, helping human advisors focus on complex, unique challenges posed by individual portfolios and leaving the humdrum of financial planning to Robo-advisors.

As the adage goes, the best time to start investing is yesterday, the second best time is now. Millennials want to invest their money, however, a major roadblock that stops them is that they often consider their earnings too paltry to start investing. This feeling may often last till their late 30s or 40s until they start making reasonable incomes, the kind that the baby boomers were making in their early 20s.

Most traditional advisors have minimum asset requirements which are quite steep such as assets of $500,000 or more which puts them out of reach for the average Millennial. Traditional advisors also charge sizeable commissions, on average of 1% to 2% of assets under management. In such a scenario, Millennials are wary of traditional advisors as they have to beat the market by a large margin to even cover the high cost of commision and create any value.

Added to this, millennials also tend to have a heightened mistrust of financial institutions. This is due to the fact that most millennials grew up and had their most formative years during the great depression. The combination of these factors makes millennials hesitant to adhere to ‘status quo’ investment patterns, instead, they prefer to put their trust in tech-driven or DIY solutions.

The paradigm shift: from trusting people to trusting Artificial Intelligence

The biggest challenge in DIY investing is often getting started, what information to consume, what to disregard, and what to act on. The entire process gets a bit overwhelming as there’s information overload on the internet which tends to cripple modern-day investors.

Established news sites like Moneycontrol, Bloomberg, Economic Times, Financial times are all fine sources for investment advice, however, for a beginner investor, it can be a nightmare to track and monitor the news constantly and connect the right dots. Gathering the right inferences from a glut of data is what makes DIY investing so challenging.

Artificial intelligence based solutions offered by Robo advisors can help solve this problem, by creating curated and actionable advice according to goals set by investors. AI can churn through Terabytes of data, study market trends, make analyses and projections and give out predictions that minimize risks involved in DIY investing. The technology may seem complicated, but the end user benefits as they only have to act on ‘actionable advice’ while all the complicated algorithms do the number crunching for them.

Robo-advisors chart the best course of action by analyzing goals, risk tolerance, and investment preferences. Investors can monitor the entire process through simplified dashboards that offer different levels of granularity. Most Robo-advisors are clear and transparent and often intuitive to modern day users who use apps for everything from ordering food, getting around town, and even dating.

Why Robo-advisors? – Convenient, low fees and DIY

The interest in Robo-advisors as an ideal solution for millennial investors is being spurred by increased transparency, accessibility, low fees and best in class customer experience offered by them as opposed to traditional advisors. The ability to invest via apps on their phone or on the web has led to another spurt in the growth the category.

Most Robo-advisors charge up to 0.50% of total assets under management with most advisors offering free services until $5000 or $10,000, depending on their target audience. They also hold off on charging account-opening fees, withdrawal or account-closing fees, trading/commission fees, or account transfer fees and stick to clear and simple management fees to appeal to millennials.

Is a Robo advisor the right fit for you?

If you are just getting started in investing and want to dabble in the markets yourself while still minimizing risks, Robo-advisors are your best bet. Their simplified user experience can help you monitor your finances on the go, eventually developing a taste for investments. Robo-advisors can help you temper your instincts and make better decisions, all without incurring the costs and inconveniences that come with a traditional human advisor. Even experienced investors are choosing to go the Robo route and transition from expensive actively managed accounts to low-cost automated alternatives.

Robo advisory, however, is not a one size fits all solution. There needs to be careful consideration of one’s financial goals before settling on one. If you have a large and complicated estate, or you’re invested into many different types of assets a human touch may be necessary. They may also not be the right fit if you have specific needs that don’t fit traditional models such as succession planning, multi-currency portfolios etc.

However, these aren’t really the target audience for Roboadvisors. If you have a fairly simple and more straightforward portfolio and you just want to get started, then Robo-advisors are the perfect starting point for your investing journey.