Robo-Investing Europe 2018 brochure by Robo-Investing

LETS LETâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S TALK TALK DIGITAL DIGITAL

EUROPE 2018

Our reach extends around the world. Our attention is focused on you. For over 60 years, Deutsche Asset Management has been a world leader in offering individuals and institutions traditional and alternative investments across all major asset classes.

Please contact: uk-fund.enquiries@db.com 0207 541 8999 deutscheam.com

Issued by Deutsche Asset Management (UK) Limited, authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (‘FCA’). Deutsche Asset Management is a trading name of Deutsche Asset Management (UK) Limited. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance.

LET’S TALK DIGITAL

EUROPE 2018

CONTENTS INTRODUCTION

EXPERT OPINIONS

HOW TECHNOLOGY IS CHANGING ESTABLISHED ADVISORY JOBS

RADICAL CHANGES IN PRIVATE INVESTMENT

THREE UNSTOPPABLE FORCES & OBJECT-ORIENTED INVESTING TM

THIS INNOVATION WILL SOLVE THE CORE CHALLENGE FACING ROBO-ADVICE

INSTANT FINANCIAL ADVICE. ANYTIME, ANYWHERE

ROBO-ADVICE GOVERNANCE AND THE CASE FOR REGTECH

CLEVER SOLUTIONS TO MIFID II

CLEVER ASSETS: COULD ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ADVANCES RAISE RETURNS IN PERPETUITY?

HOW ADVISORS CAN OUTTHINK ROBOTS

APIS

NO SLEEPLESS NIGHTS CAUSED BY YOUR ROBO ALGORITHMS

CYBER FOR ROBO INVESTING

HOW TO FOSTER A LASTING RELATIONSHIP WITH INVESTORS IN A WORLD WHERE ENGAGEMENT IS MOVING MORE AND MORE ONLINE?

DIGITAL IDENTITY

BEYOND COST-EFFICIENCY: A NEW ERA OF GROWTH FOR ROBO-ADVICE

WHATâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S THE BEST WAY TO GET INVESTED IN THE MARKET?

COLLABORATION IS KEY IN AUTOMATED ADVICE

SPEAKERS

PARTNERS

ABOUT US

ROBO INVESTING EUROPE 2018

Main Sponsor

EUROPE 2018

Founder, Anthony Christodoulou

Media It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to Robo-Investing Europe 2018 – our 3rd annual conference dedicated to digital investment across wealth and savings. We are proud to have welcomed over 1,000 delegates from across the continent.

Partners

This year looks set to be a truly transformational one. There are several long-awaited regulations and initiatives such as MIFIDII, PSD2 and Open Banking. These will offer limitless possibilities for collaboration and scaling amongst fintechs and institutions as diverse as asset managers, banks, insurers and social media platforms. The reforms are setting in motion new and exciting ways to use APIs, share data and create seamless and intelligent investor experiences. Advisors too are adopting greater use of Artificial Intelligence and automated technology, which means that the hybrid service model is expected to go mainstream along with variable pricing and service levels. This is all designed to the meet the panoply of client needs from millennials to retirees. Market segments and opportunities continue to emerge, with microsavings and workplace pensions seemingly next in line for a digital makeover. The fact that someone with as little as £1 can now access a sophisticated portfolio on the same terms as a wealthy investor is both instructive as well as inspiring; it speaks of the inclusivity only made possible by digital technology. Perhaps equally exciting is the use of algorithms to influence savings behaviour through a mixture of clever rewards, content publishing and interface design – the result of an easy marriage between data scientists and marketeers! With robo platforms globally expected to rise fourfold and reach $1tn within three years, the risk of mis-selling and the threat of data abuse will undoubtedly increase.Managing digital identity and cyber security will be crucial elements in sustaining confidence and the pace of growth in the year ahead. Please join me in thanking our esteemed group of speakers, partners and contributors. We wish you all a thought-provoking and successful day. Anthony

Expert Opinions

How technology is changing established advisory jobs By Thomas Bosshard, CEO Adviscent

The trend towards digital advice is sweeping across all sectors. In the investment management business, Robo-advisors, online platforms that use algorithms to recommend investment portfolios, are already widely in use, gaining acceptance and growing rapidly. According to a study by BI Intelligence, close to 50% of high net-worth individuals would consider using a Robo-advisor to manage their wealth. Some of the main advantages of these platforms are that they are easy to use, fast, accurate and consistent. Companies that offer them are able to lower labor and backoffice costs and create new distribution channels, even reach new markets, e.g. millennials that are used to this type of “self-service”. Furthermore, they take “human fallibility” out of the equation and thus promise more objective portfolio selection and management. Robo-advisors automate many established financial advisory processes. Therefore, observers of the world of investment are worried that major disruption may be lying ahead that will likely revolutionize investing and kill jobs. Obvious parallels are drawn to the technology-driven transformation of the music business or “Uberization”. Therefore, it is worthwhile to look more closely at which processes can be automatized and which are better left to the human brain. The functions Robo-advisors offer are limited. They involve asking routine questions on an investor’s current financial status, risk tolerance, time horizon and financial goals. Based on this information they then select a personalized portfolio. Human advisors also need answers to these questions, for example in order to assess a client’s tolerance for risk. They often even give clients the same risk assessment questionnaires that Robo-advisors use. However, as most financial advisors know, many clients struggle to fill in the questionnaire. Not all of them understand their own risk tolerance, especially if they have limited experience with investing. In a face-to-face conversation a human advisor can sense this and ask related questions to gauge the client’s expectations, e.g. to which extent a client would tolerate losses in the pursuit of long-term financial goals. Client advisors can set themselves apart from Robo-advisors by giving clients the opportunity to express themselves. The traditional advisory process allows them to gain a deeper understanding of the client’s fears, personal goals, long-term and short-term, and values. They can show clients when fear can lead to irrational behavior by educating them on what can go wrong and how it is best to behave. Therefore, concerns about the rise of Robo-advisors may even result in a helpful discussion of what a financial advisor’s job really should be. Some experts like to use the «doctor analogy» to justify the value financial advisors create for clients. They reportedly even suggest asking clients whether they would ever go to a “Robo-doctor” if they were ill, and hardly any client would say yes.

ROBO INVESTING EUROPE 2018

Patients cannot self-diagnose themselves and pick their own treatment. They lack the knowledge and the experience needed to make sound medical decisions. In a similar vein, retail clients and unexperienced investors with little knowledge of finance require professional advice if they do not want to harm their financial health due to bad decisions. The main difference, however, between the client relationship in both professions boils down to trust: Ever since the outbreak of the financial market crisis and the other very public scandals such as Libor, more and more of financial clients have lost trust in their advisor’s advice or suspect ulterior motives such as them pushing their own products. On the other hand, aggressive marketing from the pharmaceutical industry is also known to have an influence on a physician’s medical decisions to the extent that patients also fear that they are pushing drugs or unnecessary surgery, driving some of the less trusting of them to require a second opinion. But financial advisors were never required to take a Hippocratic oath that binds them to act in their clients’ best interests. Regarding risk assessment and behavior, there are some noteworthy parallels between the professions. Patients don’t always take their doctor’s advice, e.g. to lose weight, because the short-term pains weigh more than the long-term health benefits of weight loss. Similarly, financial advisors cannot prevent nervous investors acting on impulse at the first signs of a down market, thus hurting their returns in the long-run, a behavioral phenomenon known as loss aversion. Furthermore, there are also many routine medical procedures that can be automatized. A particular field in which artificial intelligence (AI) or the infamous “robo-doctors” are currently creating a buzz among players in the world of healthcare is the assessment of cardio-vascular risk. A recent paper in the medical journal PLOS One shows that algorithms have already beat doctors in predicting heart attacks by 7.6 percent, compared to the standard method, which involves doctors carefully considering a patient’s demographics, blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and other potential risk factors. However, as Dr. Stephen Weng, one of the researchers that developed the algorithm, explains to NBC News MACH: “An AI algorithm won’t be able to tell you that the patient was nervous because they had a big job interview in the afternoon and was caught in a traffic jam on the way to the appointment and thus their blood pressure was high on the day.” As a result, Robo-doctors will perhaps in future not be able to replace doctors but assist them in doing their jobs. So just like financial advisors, a doctor’s job is evolving due to new technology, and discussions on what the added value of human doctors could be in the age of AI would seem very helpful.

Start Digital Wealth Management Itˈs easy from now on

High Performance Portfolio API 1,000,000 portfolios in 6 minutes Flexibility, high volume capability and ease-of-use

What it does From decision to documentation, we digitalize every aspect of portfolio management.

Asset Management

Analytics

Risk Engine

Monitoring

Essentially, the main advantages of algorithm-based “medical care” lie in the amount of data available for interpretation and the sensitivity of the analysis. Here machines (or big data and advanced analytics) have clear advantage over the human brain. Therefore, empathy, integrity and trust seem to be the path forward for any advisory profession in an age of robots and artificial intelligence.

Rebalancing

Order Management

Reporting

ROBO INVESTING EUROPE 2018

Radical change in private investment By Mario Alves, Aixigo

Banks and financial service providers are facing challenges such as cost transparency with the regulations of MiFID II / FIDLEG that came into force at the beginning of this year. Additionally, innovation pressure from FinTechs and the expansion of ETF offerings are driving institutions to action. The changes made by the ECJ judgement in 2017 and new channels such as Alexa & Co. are giving banks and financial service providers new opportunities in sales.

REGULATION

The MiFID 2 requirement to provide a complete cost report now exists for every financial service provider. The cost information must relate to both the distribution level (service) and the product level. This requirement increases the constraints of transactions and thus the risk of lower revenues.

RISE OF ETF

The growth in ETF purchases by private investors also presents a challenge. These often appear to end customers as the better choice because of their features. Passive low-cost funds are less attractive to institutions, creating a real revenue challenge.

FINTECHS ARE PUSHING

The digitalisation of society leads to the situation that large groups of customers are finding out more about investment on the Internet and investing money online is becoming much more relevant. This will benefit FinTechs with already impressive growth rates and Assets under management.

JURISDICTION

The decision of the European Court of Justice on June 14, 2017 should be seen as a relief when looking at the challenges of cost transparency and FinTechs: On 14 June, the European Court of Justice held that the brokerage of asset management contracts is not an investment brokerage subject to authorisation. The judges in Luxembourg clearly rejected the previous administrative practice of national regulators. This judgment will significantly increase the “popularity” of asset management.

ALEXA & CO.

Alexa came to Europe in 2016. Google Home and other offers followed. Many banks are taking the path of uniting these media with the banking business. Institutions should be vigilant and use the many possibilities for distribution. Yet, it is not sufficient to connect to Alexa and Co. – a fast backend system for the investment business is required - a portfolio management system, for example, as aixigo has developed.

CHANGE WILL COME

Banks and asset managers across Europe now offer full asset management from sums of well under € 100,000. Up to now, this was only possible in many parts of the market at a multiple of this sum. In many countries, portfolio management models continue to replace traditional investment advisory models.

HIGH PERFORMANCE PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT AS FOUNDATION

With the use of digital asset management, banks and financial service providers have the opportunity to offer completely new services. Customer segments that could not previously be considered, such as in retail banking, can now be served. However, this requires highly efficient processes, automation and digitalisation. The solution is a portfolio management system that can handle the large volume business because it e.g. offers an extreme speed. As a result, automated low-cost asset management can be offered and at the same time information of the individual customer about his investment.

WEBSITE:

www.aixigo.de

Digital Rule-Based Investing Personalised Systematic Investing. At Scale.

AN INNOVATIVE FIRM FOCUSED ON QUANTITATIVE INVESTING & ASSET ALLOCATION

ALPIMA is a new-generation B2B platform specialised in rule-based investing and asset allocation for institutional investors.

Three Unstoppable Forces & Object-Oriented Investing TM THREE POWERFUL FORCES ARE RE-SHAPING INVESTMENT AND WEALTH MANAGEMENT. First, the digital revolution extends from internal, driven by the need to improve operational efficiency, to external, fuelled by growing demand for digital engagement by all actors across the value chain. In the age of the cloud and ubiquitous apps, it no longer cuts it to build products, cover clients and provide after-sales service with tools developed in the late 90â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s / early 00â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. Second, money management is inexorably going systematic. Factor investing, smart beta, quant indices and robo-advisors are all part of this trend, along with the growth in ETFs as investment building blocks. It does not mean all investment managers and advisors will end-up being replaced by machines and that active management is dead. It means that the traditional lines between quant and fundamental on the one hand, and active and passive on the other, are blurring. Quantitative techniques are becoming an increasingly important item in the toolkit of all financial professionals. To use an analogy from a different industry, would you imagine boarding an airplane that has no autopilot? Science and technology made flying safer and more reliable. Everybody should welcome a similar trend in asset and wealth management. For those afraid of losing out to machines, one should take comfort in the fact that there is still a pilot in the cockpit, and it will be so for a while. It is time to seriously embrace the systematisation of money management and harness it to produce better outcomes for clients and other stakeholders. This can be done without drowning in the smart beta alphabet soup or getting lost in the factor zoo. Third, the primacy of personalisation dictates that one product for all is no longer sufficient. End-investors increasingly demand custom beta vs. bulk beta, personalised solutions vs. mass-marketed products and bespoke strategies vs standard offerings. It goes without saying that the financial profile of a senior corporate executive is very different from that of a doctor or university endowment. Investment solutions must reflect these differences and go beyond simplistic low/medium/high risk categories. For example, environmentally-minded clients will prefer portfolios that are negatively correlated to the price of coal or crude oil. Yet such links are rarely measured, let alone shown to end-investors, today. These forces are at play against the backdrop of a changing regulatory landscape, with MIFID II, in particular, taking considerable mind-share away from other strategically important matters.

Please contact us to learn more about our platform and services. ALPIMA - London Office | +4420 3457 1044 | info@alpima.net | www.alpima.net ALPIMA Ltd is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (reference number 707433).

ROBO INVESTING EUROPE 2018

Generating demonstrable performance and providing differentiated service requires new tools and new thinking. We are seeing firms small and large re-think the way they design products, manage portfolios and serve clients. A movement has started. Its aim is to harness the tectonic shift towards digital and quant in order to combine the best of human and machine and offer truly personalised investing.

INTRODUCING OBJECT-ORIENTED INVESTINGTM

The powerful concept of object-orientation has helped drive computer science, technology and business for decades. It allows for various digital objects to be created, manipulated and visualised with ease. It is an essential aspect of apps, operating systems and programming languages that power today’s society. At ALPIMA, we apply object-orientation to investing. We start from the insight that any investment strategy, be it a portfolio, an index or a quantitative strategy, can be described as an object with its own attributes, such as constituents, allocation logic and constraints. Strategies can be static or dynamic, based on a fixed or changing set of constituents, and have embedded goals. Object-Oriented Investing™ considerably improves and accelerates the design, implementation and monitoring of rule-based strategies, thereby enabling product designers, portfolio managers and advisors to improve the way they design products, build portfolios and serve clients. Creating a new strategy becomes as easy as building Lego. Strategies can be evaluated in great detail via dynamic dashboards which instantly reveal the drivers of performance and risk. They can be combined, compared, composed and optimised to match very specific requirements. They can be altered based on market views and product preferences. Object-Oriented Investing™ offers many advantages. It enables the delivery of truly personalised investing at scale, and the reconciliation of traditional opposites such as fundamental and quant, or active and passive management. It leads naturally to evidence-based and goal-based investing. It makes following a scientific approach easy so that hypotheses can be verified quickly. It boosts financial intelligence by generating valuable insights, helping to gain a deep understanding of strategies and portfolios. And it lends itself uniquely well to machine learning, AI and tokenisation. We built ALPIMA’s platform around the idea of Object-Oriented Investing™ with one purpose: to help our clients improve the way they design products, build portfolios and serve their customers and investors. For a more detailed discussion on Object-Oriented Investing™ and how it can help you secure your competitive edge, contact us at info@alpima.net.

This innovation will solve the core challenge facing robo-advice By Amy Young, Upside Consulting Group Robo advice has made a lot of things easier: it digitized onboarding, simplified risk profiling and automated portfolio construction and rebalancing. However, it has failed to address one critical thing; most of the consumers who are likely to embrace a simple digital solution have little or no savings to invest. As a result, they simply don’t think of investing as something that’s for people like them, which makes them very expensive to acquire. In contrast, a tool that draws people to investing by helping them save is a very different proposition. The wealth management industry has an opportunity to cost effectively serve millions of new consumers by using tools that facilitate saving as a springboard into investing. Think about how your parents taught you to ride a two-wheeled bike. They started out holding the seat, and when you got to the end of the block you realized they’d let go and you were doing it all on your own. The knowledge that you could do it instilled the motivation and confidence to keep trying. This is exactly what micro investing does. It shows consumers that they can indeed save, and then simplifies the investing journey by automatically investing those savings in a diversified portfolio. The impact of these tools was modest when all they could do was round up coffee purchases. However, recent enhancements show the potential these tools have to help users save much larger amounts of money: doubling or tripling round-ups (30% of Acorns customers are doing this) prompting people to save additional amounts at daily, weekly or monthly intervals (17% of Acorns users who viewed this feature signed up) analyzing the user’s income and spending patterns and proactively transferring money to savings (the average Digit saves up to $170/month with this approach). Critics of using behavioral nudges to drive retirement saving all point to the fact that while they help people save a bit of money, they don’t go far enough to prepare people for the full cost of retirement. What these critics overlook is the power of momentum. Once consumers see that they can save a little with no effort, they’re willing to make a bit of effort to save more. Microinvesting tools are now offering personalized guidance to keep users progressing on their investing journey, with continual reinforcement that small behaviour changes today have big payoffs in the long run. The ability of microinvesting to help consumers save progressively larger sums, will transform the wealth management industry. Once a firm has the infrastructure to analyze user transactions and deliver the relevant saving nudges, it effectively reduces the marginal cost of acquiring a dollar of assets to near zero – for firms that already have customer relationships. Banks could dramatically improve the financial well-being of their customers – and grow investable assets - by embedding these features as the default configuration of every chequing and credit card account. Hopefully the recent partnership between PayPal and Acorns will encourage them to embrace this important opportunity.

Instant financial advice. Anytime, anywhere ABAKA is a Financial Wellbeing platform, powered by cutting edge Artificial Intelligence technologies. We deliver Personalised Financial Guidance & Advice as well as improved customer experiences that build trust and loyalty, across all digital channels. ABAKA works both with employers and financial institutions. Whether through their website or their mobile applications, we help our partners build their own digital assistant and enterprise chatbots. To compete and grow in the digital age, it is of vital importance to connect to customers: we help our partners proactively offer financial guidance, advice and intelligent nudges to help their customers achieve their personal financial goals. The ABAKA solution empowers people to make informed financial decisions about their personal expenses, savings and pensions. By providing timely financial help and a tailored, digitally integrated mobile service, ABAKA reduces financial stress, while simultaneously increasing customer engagement and communication. The seamless integration of machine learning and savings is the next step in helping businesses become smarter and empower individuals to make intelligent decisions about the future of their money. ABAKA was formed in response to the huge challenge facing the pensions industry to achieve better retirement outcomes for employees. Workers are increasingly required to bear the full responsibility of managing their savings while affordable financial solutions remain scarce. “The way we interact with our finances is undergoing a radical transformation,” said Fahd Rachidy, Founder and CEO of ABAKA. “Individuals are being given increased freedom, which brings with it the increased responsibility of managing their own pensions and savings. ABAKA helps with these decisions, deepens our understanding of complicated processes and allows us to gain better control of our money, all within our day-to-day lives. Using Artificial Intelligence, our virtual advisor educates, engages and empowers people regardless of their wealth. Powered by deep learning neural networks, it uses a tailored experience to consolidate all types of financial accounts in one place, analyse what you have, and understand your personal context in order to provide you with automated financial guidance. Our mission is simply to improve people’s financial wellbeing. For more information visit: http://www.abaka.me/

ROBO INVESTING EUROPE 2018

ROBO-advice Governance and the case for RegTech Chris Davies MSc, Founder, RegTech platform Model Office – MO®. With The FCA now focusing on the implementation of MiFIDII and with the next Suitability review, SMCR and GDPR also on the way, we are now seeing far more focus on disclosure, transparency, accountability, roles and responsibilities. With the rise in Robo-advisers (Robo’s) we see both a regulatory opportunity and a threat. From opportunity stance we have those Robo’s who can facilitate the much coveted streamlined advice where established Banks and Wealth Management firms can go direct to client offering a low cost automated digital solution, highly attractive for the baby boomers and the millennials alike. You also have those Robo’s empowering financial advisers thus providing a ‘cyber-service’ to meet their client’s developing digital needs. Yet what is yet to be comprehensively addressed is the potential problems surrounding the underlying algorithms that power the Robo’s outputs. FINRA’s report on digital investment advice showcased this with governance issues surrounding the asset allocations, based on the same client profile, produced by seven independent digital advisers, equity allocations ranged from 10% to 40%. This example highlights the need to acknowledge any implicit trust with algorithms and encourage a ’four eyes’ and challenge approach to: The Methodological approaches embedded in the algorithms used Assess if these methodological approaches reflects the regulatory requirements for suitability Assess if these methodological approaches reflects the firm’s proposition Added to this is the risk profiling, capacity for loss and portfolio analysis requirements. This all reinforces the need for Robo-adviser technology suppliers and distributers to establish and implement effective governance and supervision for their auto-advice solutions. The answer lies with a new brand of FinTech known as RegTech. This technology allows firm’s to understand how their data, proposition and client service interacts with the regulations in real time. This means that RegTech could dovetail with any Robo solution and stress test its outputs against suitability requirements such as Know Your Customer for example. This means that RegTech can assess and review a methodology a tool uses (included any assumptions made) against risk profiles and capacity for loss plus reported client needs and flag up any potential conflicts. By applying RegTech, firms can ensure governance and risk management at lower cost and ensure they are using a pro-active strategy that assesses Robo outputs in real time and moves away from traditional tick-box reactive compliance practices. www.model-office.co.uk

ROBO INVESTING EUROPE 2018

Clever solutions to MiFID II CLEVER SOLUTIONS TO MIFID II

Enhanced requirements that MiFID II have introduced surrounding advice, investor protection and communication may mean a move into the future when it comes to how financial planners choose to meet them. The boom in artificial intelligence and machine learning mean that setting up technology to do the dirty work for you can set you free to focus on other parts of your work, and MiFID II is key to helping financial planners see this. Clever Adviser Technology (Clever) offers financial planners an investment service which uses algorithms, data and machine learning, rather than human instinct and emotion. It analyses millions of pieces of fund data per month, removing the possibility of herd mentality distorting the decision-making process, resulting in more rational investment outcomes. By using an analytical, evidence-based approach, Clever aims to reduce the influence that reactionism, short-termism and subjectivity can have on the investment decisionmaking process. Clever offers two solutions, CleverAdviser and the CleverAdviser Managed Portfolio Service, both of which could help financial planners meet some of the key objectives set out in MiFID II de-risking their business and helping them to reduce administrative workloads.

CLEVERADVISER

Every month, using Clever’s unique technology, CleverAdviser identifies underperforming funds and recommends the top performing fund in each sector. This service automatically creates a monthly email or letter for the financial planner’s clients, recommending a switch or no switch within their portfolios. This is all judged against criteria carefully chosen to meet their individual investment goals. Clients are invited to make changes with the simple click of a button, with the final word always remaining with them. The full audit trail provided plays a valuable role in helping the financial planner satisfy their wider regulatory obligations included in MiFID II.

CLEVERADVISER MANAGED PORTFOLIO SERVICE (CLEVER MPS)

Clever MPS consists of five portfolios, the asset allocations of which are derived from Distribution Technology’s Dynamic Planner and are managed by 8AM Global, who have specialised in running bespoke model portfolio solutions since 2006. Clever MPS utilises the same unique quantitative fund selection and monitoring service as CleverAdviser and provides a financial planner’s clients with a white-labelled monthly update on their portfolio, detailing any fund switches that have been made in that month. Growth from starting point of August 2012:

CLEVERADVISER RISK 5 EXAMPLE VS SECTOR AVERAGE

Quantfolio, enabling customized AI robo advisory for banks

Core AI

Portfolio AI

Macro AI

Advanced factor based selection module, utilizing machine learning algorithms on thousands of factors to rank instruments

Sophisticated, individualized portfolios built on algorithmic instrument selection

Downside protection and tactical allocation support with AI utilizing hundreds of indicators from a variety of data sources

For banks considering deploying customized robo advisory with a quantitative approach: contact us at: post@quantfol.io or visit quantfol.io

Quantfolio is a Bergen based Fintech company delivering “AI-in-a-box” components for banks & wealth managers with a digitial presence. Our goal is to empower banks and WM’s with our AI investment components to provide their customers with anything from low cost savings portfolios to sophisticated investment strategies

normally reserved for HNW individuals through quantitative hedgefunds. Ultimately we aim to democratize wealth creation by offering sophisticated financial advice for EVERYONE through their local bank. Our team consist of passionate and highly skilled individuals, ranging from

serial tech-entrepreneurs, traders, quants and developers with PhDs within machine learning. Quantfolio is partly owned by Sbanken, Norway’s largest challenger bank, also our first customer. Our HQ is based in Bergen with a quant team based in San Diego.

Clever assets: could artificial intelligence advances raise returns in perpetuity? Stuart Kirk, Head of Deutsche Asset Management’s, Global Research Institute

As prices soar it is common for investors to dream up ways to justify valuations. That said, here are two out-of-the-box arguments why rapid advances in artificial intelligence could raise returns in perpetuity. The point is not to suggest current valuations are justified. Rather now seems like a sensible moment to ask whether some new technologies are so different from previous advancements they could upend the laws of economics and accounting. First consider how artificial intelligence can alter the concept of depreciation. Everyone understands that assets such as buildings, machines, and mainframe computers deteriorate over time. Ageing appears as depreciation in company financial statements and in 2017 was equivalent to about a third of operating cashflows globally. But what happens to a computer with artificial intelligence that actually becomes smarter? Machine learning by definition is the opposite of decay. If an asset grows more valuable with use then it should be negatively depreciated. For certain technology firms the earnings kick would be substantial. At Google, say, depreciation in the past year was $6bn. If only a tenth of that was reversed the company’s market capitalisation could rise by about one fifth. Nor must depreciation reverse to improve returns. Simply lowering the rate at which assets tire out is enough. Artificial intelligence combined with the internet of things will result in assets becoming more adaptive and responsive – thereby extending their useful lives. And slowing the ageing process comes at a crucial moment. For US non-financial companies, for example, the ratio of accumulated depreciation to the gross value of plant and equipment has risen by a quarter over the past 25 years. A second argument involves the other main factor of production: labour. The reality is that what it means to be human – and therefore a worker – will change over the coming decades. Breakthrough technologies such as brain-computer interfaces, robotic exoskeletons, and virtual assistants have the potential to dramatically increase productivity. This is desirable in and of itself, but also remember how employee costs are accounted for. Remuneration is expensed as a profit and loss item. Human beings are therefore treated differently to other assets, which sit on balance sheet and are depreciated. Should this remain the case if half of a construction worker’s marginal productivity of labour is derived from an exoskeleton? Or how about a call centre operator plugged into a future version of Salesforce via a brain-computer interface? At some level of

ROBO INVESTING EUROPE 2018

bionics or digital enhancement the world’s accounting bodies may decide that workers can be depreciable assets too. The result would be a near-term jump in profitability. However if human productivity improves as cyborg worker-machines learn on the job then the negative depreciation story above also applies here. Again the potential uplift to margins is huge as the labour share of output in the US, for example, is about 60 per cent. To be sure this is some out-there stuff. But so is the idea of intelligent machines that (who?) learn and improve with age.

Embrace Digital. Grow Your Practice. Investors today are actively engaged. They want to know more about their investing options and better understand their personal finances. They want control, transparency, and access. In this 24/7 information driven environment, advisors need to embrace digital solutions. They need to connect with investors on different levels and demonstrate that their advice is essential.

Leverage Envestnet’s Client Portal It’s a digital platform with configurable modules that aggregates personal finances with investment accounts, all white-labeled for the advisor.

A set of online tools gives end-investors greater insight and control to chart their expenses and income, monitor cash flow and determine net worth—all while providing a holistic view of their wealth.

And, a digital storefront allows end-investors to experience a personalized approach to investing and to open an account on their own.

Join the digital revolution. Learn more at envestnet.com/clientportal. ENVESTNET RESERVES THE RIGHT TO ADD TO, CHANGE OR ELIMINATE ANY OF ITS SERVICES WITHOUT PRIOR NOTICE. APPROVED FOR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONALS ONLY. IT IS NOT INTENDED FOR PRIVATE INVESTORS. © 2018 Envestnet, Inc. All rights reserved.

ROBO INVESTING EUROPE 2018

How advisors can outthink robots By Blake Wood, Director of Program Innovation, Envestnet Originally Published on January 17 2018 on financial-planning.com

As the learning capability of machines continues to improve, advisors are increasingly finding themselves outmaneuvered by robos. These digital advisors are particularly appealing to millennials, who now represent close to half of the U.S. online banking population. To that end, there is a technological gap as well as a demographic vulnerability that advisors are facing, especially as they help consumers with the dual challenge of managing short-term spending and long-term financial planning. How can human advisors overcome this digital challenge and rise above the competition presented by robos? It starts with taking advantage of the same technologies — algorithms combined with big data and machine learning — to provide even better service to clients. Technology works best when combined with human intelligence, which is why financial advisors should not fear the rise of the robos, but instead take advantage of artificial intelligence solutions that are currently underutilized. Where traditional financial institutions and advisors fall short is leveraging data from short-term spending, saving, and borrowing combined with data from long-term financial planning to deliver advice and guidance that can help clients. The truth is, scaling a solution that can gather, categorize, and normalize this data from multiple sources is the biggest challenge. This is where the use of AI and machine learning technologies can help automate complex processes so advisors can understand the full context of their clients’ financial situations. Increasingly, advisors are looking toward family office style services, private wealth management advisory firms that serve ultrahigh-net-worth investors, to deliver heightened value with a broader range of services. This model, though, can be scaled down to help clients lower on the wealth spectrum in their day-to-day finances. For instance, by helping automate decisions on what bills to pay first (mortgage vs student loans). By leveraging AI to deliver moments of “micro advice,” advisors can deliver more value to clients. AI technologies also empower advisors to scale personal financial management across their book, typically an area that was underserviced or ignored. As a result, clients achieve better financial health and develop a better mindset to focus on long-term goals and planning. This use of technology can be used to deliver thoughtful narratives that will help clients through personalized data intelligence gleaned from peer comparisons. Indeed, working with financial advisors can be a big hurdle for younger clients who may feel they “don’t have enough.” Advisors are increasingly providing PFM tools to help investors explore, educate, and compare themselves to others. This anonymous, but relevant, type of benchmarking can help clients learn from peers in similar financial situations, income, spending and geography to help them develop realistic goal-based solutions

for achieving financial wellness. The first step is for investors to enroll in a digital advice program which helps to bridge what was originally a big hurdle and makes full advice more approachable while helping them become more organized and goal-oriented. By combining guidance on day-to-day finances with future planning, financial advisors can better aid in improving their clients’ financial wellness. One exciting example using omni-channel delivery such as chatbots, alerts, emails and SMS demonstrates that financial advisors can provide specific advice such as, ‘eat out one time less per month to save for retirement or transfer a fixed amount into a savings account every month for a down payment on a house.’ What is the value of human financial advisors versus robo advisors? Together, both are better. Human financial advisors deliver better, deeper, and broader financial thinking and planning than technology is capable of doing alone. By leveraging AI technology to scale coaching and financial planning services, financial advisors will continue to excel in relating to clients, earning their trust, and providing advice for complex situations. Technology helps financial advisors scale, but technology alone is not as powerful in delivering advice as it is when combined with human interactions. Only humans can get to know their clients as unique individuals, predict the changing landscape, help to plan for changing regulations, or optimize for what will come. While digital advice platforms continue to make headlines, they cannot deliver the added value and insightful guidance that investors can receive when they develop a trusted, long-term relationship with a professional, human financial advisor.

ROBO INVESTING EUROPE 2018

API PORTAL TURN YOUR IDEAS INTO REALITY FASTER THAN EVER Powered by our Planning & Advice Engine

APIs Given the preponderance of laptops, tablets and smartphones around today, it’s hard to imagine a time, before the internet, when the world was not so widely connected. Much of our everyday lives are now influenced by our on-line activity whether through tweeting, posting or surfing the web. Our insatiable need to be constantly connected appears to be never-ending. How then, can we, as financial services experts, make use of this online connectivity to help deliver faster, more efficient and cost-effective services to our clients? The answer lies with the humble API, or Application Programming Interface.

WHAT IS AN API?

Basically, an API is the messenger that connects software together, much like a waiter in a restaurant. The API takes a request from one application (the customer’s order in our waiter’s case) and communicates with a second system (the kitchen). The waiter tells the kitchen what is needed and then brings the response back to the customer (their food). At no point does the customer see what is happening behind the scenes in the kitchen; they only see the outcome when their food arrives. In the same way, APIs allow applications to talk seamlessly to each other without any user knowledge or intervention to obtain the information or functionality required.

THE ADVANTAGES OF USING APIS

Successful robo advisers understand the need of providing personalised solutions to their clients that are not only compliant, but which are accessible at any time, via any means that their clients may prefer. However, when it comes to financial planning and assessing risk suitability there are many hidden dangers of ignoring elements such as sequencing risk or not explaining the potential downsides in a way that relates to your clients. You need, therefore, to find a way of providing an engaging user experience that meets the specific needs of your clients. One of the major advantages of APIs is the flexibility of being able to present data to clients in a way that makes sense to them. By using APIs, robo advisers can integrate new functionality into their existing software, enabling their clients to enjoy a seamless user experience. EValue has produced API forecasts for many high street names and start-ups alike, providing them with speedy and robust calculations and, therefore, confidence in their own solutions, whilst enabling them to maintain complete control over their user

MORE INFORMATION api.ev.uk contact@ev.uk

ROBO INVESTING EUROPE 2018

experience. This easy and direct access also enables a faster time to market for advisers looking to stay at the forefront of industry trends and differentiate themselves from the competition. APIs make it easier than ever for financial services providers to expand into markets they may never have previously considered. Developers can now build innovative prototypes and demo versions, underpinned by reliable calculation engines, before being launched into a live system.

The world’s most awarded and highly endorsed Risk Tolerance ToolkitTM — validated on over one million people.

In a world of ever advancing digital technology, real value lies in creating seamless, engaging user experiences that meet all your clients’ needs. Advisers that thrive will, undoubtedly, be those willing to embrace the use of the unassuming API.

Secures properly informed

first meeting

consent from clients with: - Robust financial planning - Award-winning investor profiling

Happy clients are valuable

Seamless integration with

Right advice, from the very

A Gen III white-label robo that fully incorporates industry best practices

clients A tick in every box

your portfolio management and order execution platforms

Tried and trusted

CMY

Create lifetime relationships, through better advice that results in clients who refer more, invest more and remain suitably invested through market highs and lows. contact: info@finametrica.com

Multi-jurisdiction, multi-currency, multi-language contact: info@planplus.com

Changing How the World Does Planning Financial Planning Software and Training Solutions for: Independent Financial Advisors and Planners Financial Institutions Educators Modular and Comprehensive Planning. Multi-jurisdiction, multi-currency, multi-language. contact: info@planplus.com

ROBO INVESTING EUROPE 2018

No Sleepless Nights Caused By Your Robo Algorithms FinaMetrica & PlanPlus Suitability Solutions FinaMetrica has been helping high end financial advisers objectively map the needs of clients to portfolios since 1998. Initially in Australia, then the USA, the UK and now in 20 countries, more than one million profiles have been completed for thousands of advisers. The evidence from these psychometrically tested profiles is that risk tolerance is generally relatively stable over time, as investors age, through market turmoils and uninfluenced by financial education. Risk tolerance is an enduring personality ‘trait’, not an unstable ‘state’ of mind varying with market noise. As one of few stables in an investor’s financial life, the accurate assessment of risk tolerance is important. Investment decisions can be framed against the agreed risk score. Risk tolerance is, in turn, one of three factors that enable the accurate development of an investor’s risk profile. Together, risk tolerance, risk required and capacity for loss provide a defensible, collaborative framework for both initial and ongoing portfolio recommendations. FinaMetrica has integrated with financial planning systems in several countries to improve the administrative and compliance efficiencies of advisory businesses. In August 2017 FinaMetrica merged with PlanPlus of Canada, to better service our joint customers and, in particular, to meet the needs of the unadvised middle market and legacy investment managers. Not only does PlanPlus bring academic rigour to the calculation of risk required and capacity for loss, it also has a 25-year track record supplying comprehensive multi-jurisdictional, multi-currency and multi-language financial planning systems to banks and larger advisory firms. Together we have developed ‘Best Practice’ suitability algorithms and professional judgement matrices for the robo marketplace through miPlanPlus. miPlanPlus is built with academic and practical rigour delivering a high level of defensibility. It manages a broad range of inputs and outputs and can be upscaled into our comprehensive financial planning suite PlanPlus Planit.

What kind of people want to steal your data? The kind of people we know how to catch.

Robo advisors are, beyond any doubt, disruptive to the financial advice market. They change the speed, accuracy and supply of advice processes. There is no meaningful distinction in the eyes of the regulator between robo and personal advice obligations in most countries. Damaging errors of human advice may be leveraged many times over by an otherwise successful robo. This makes managing and reducing systemic and systematic risk in robos a priority. We see two initial markets for miPlanPlus. First, enterprises looking to service a large client base in a profitable cost efficient, client centric and robust manner; turning otherwise risky non-profitable business into profitable low-touch business. Secondly, investment managers with legacy books bringing new services to market can protect current accounts with a methodology to match existing allocations to clients’ needs built into a scalable pathway for further service and product developments. If you have sleepless nights over concerns that your current risk profiling is not defensible we would be happy to review the test and outcomes. Or if you simply want to see what our robo can do for you contact :Roderic.Rennison@planplus.com

Our cyber-security specialists identify cyber risks that businesses face, define strategies to protect them and their customers, and manage any crisis swiftly and discreetly. To know more, go to mishcon.com/cyber

Business | Dispute Resolution | Real Estate | Mishcon Private

It’s business. But it’s personal.

ROBO INVESTING EUROPE 2018

Cyber for robo investing Cyber attacks are here to stay; they are front page news, a target of serious government conversation, and even an increasingly common plot device for Hollywood blockbusters that need a modern way for criminals to steal funds or make off with confidential data. The critical difference of course, is that outside of movies, most hacks aren’t sensational heists or system-wide ransomware attacks: they simply exploit a lack of employee awareness, or the lack of even the most basic security within a business. This simplicity of attacks can be seen just as easily when looking internally; companies are just as frequently falling victim to employees and other insiders, who can often remove confidential data and intellectual property without being detected, ultimately reducing the competiveness and value of businesses. In a high tech organisation it is easy to overlook simple issues of fraud and misuse that affect all businesses, by focusing on the sophisticated. The majority of cyber risks are not sophisticated, but succeed on a lack of the basics.These cyber issues, both sophisticated and simple, are keenly felt in up and coming FinTech businesses whose business models are at heart based around painstakingly developed proprietary algorithms and software that replicate and replace the investment strategies of the traditional finance sector. These businesses are fundamentally reliant on this intellectual property, and this property and by extension their businesses may be vulnerable to cyber security risks. As always, the business strategy for managing the cyber risks Robo Investors face should be proportionate to the scale of the company and its appetite for risk. It’s important to strike a balance: implement an excessive level of controls, and you could potentially be left without a functioning business. Alternatively, you may end up with an environment where your employees are actively working around controls, potentially leaving your business even more exposed than it was before your controls improvement. The FinTech and Robo Investing sector is also likely to exposed to more complex cyber risks in the future. As artificial intelligence approaches grow more sophisticated, and the ability for machines to learn and adapt grows, there is a risk that operators will not truly understand the implications of a model’s automated decisions, and that unintended consequences may result. This could manifest itself in bad decisions where the adage of “garbage in, garbage out” holds true and an algorithm develops bad strategies based on bad data, but there is also scope for data manipulation causing more interesting issues. Sophisticated attackers who obtain and can test investment models could potentially craft malicious data that will force a model to make bad decisions in certain circumstances. It’s difficult for business leaders to be experts in cyber security and fraud when they have so many other pressures on their time, but they do need to know what questions to ask and be ready to respond quickly if – and, more likely, when – something happens. The ever-expanding alphabet soup of regulations – whether it’s GDPR, the SEC or the ePrivacy Directive – are there to try to protect businesses, but ultimately the onus is on business owners to be prepared and to act quickly in the event of a cyber attack.

ROBO INVESTING EUROPE 2018

How to foster a lasting relationship with investors in a world where engagement is moving more and more online?

A Capgemini study shows that while investors are embracing the benefits of online tools, wealth management firms seem to underestimate clients’ appetite for roboadvice. Almost 50% of global HNWI would consider having a portion of their wealth managed by an automated advisory service, while only 20% of wealth managers thought their clients would do so. This “perception gap” is due to the fact that investors are 99% of their time normal consumers and the trends shaping the consumer market are also quickly permeating the wealth and investment management space.

Investors are at the centre of the new digital workplace. A set of technologies and solutions enable them to interact with services, contents, advisors, investment experts, helpdesk employees or other fellow investors. Such connected clients need access to their advisors on their own terms, at a time and through channels with which they are most comfortable, using safe online investment tools. Many firms are thinking about how to position themselves in terms of online investment management services, but not many are yet providing tools and services for this purpose. The chart underlines the belief that in the next two years, an evolution from online investment tools to online investment servicing will take place, with a strong surge in robo and hybrid advisory as online investment solutions. This shift towards online investment won’t displace completely the traditional ways: it is not an “either/or” reality, but rather an ”and/and” reality. Although wealth management firms will increasingly include online tools as part of their offering, the traditional face-to-face interaction will still exist and will be complimented by online solutions in different flavours.

Just like the boundaries between market segments – mass affluent, affluent and HNW – the boundaries between the different market offerings are also blurring more and more. Digitisation is enabling a much more multi-faceted set of offerings.

FIGURE 1 : WHAT TYPE OF ONLINE INVESTMENT AND WEALTH MANAGEMENT TOOLS ARE YOU OFFERING TO YOUR CLIENTS?

Digitalisation enables wealth management firms to “mass customise” their business i.e. “to provide a service for an audience of one”. Offering a very tailored, personalised service in a factory-style operational-excellent fashion, that is what we ultimately mean with mass-customisation. Essentially, it entails the creation of a “sticky” digital environment for the client and the advisor to actively & pro-actively interact, aiming at reaching a personalised experience. A hybrid reality – where investors can switch seamlessly and within the same process between face-to-face and online interaction depending on their immediate needs – is the future “sweet spot”. According to the 2016 report by Objectway and Efma, Digital Engagement & Collaboration in Wealth and Investment Management, future interactions between financial institutions and their clients will mostly be hybrid (fig. 1).

Capgemini, World Wealth Report, 2015

ROBO INVESTING EUROPE 2018

Digital identity Peter Smith, Head of Industry Policy Liaison at TISA

Beyond Cost-Efficiency: A New Era of Growth for Robo-Advice Simon-Kucher & Partners

Open banking is now with us, the idea is that UK banks will have to shift from being one-stop-shops for financial services, to open platforms where consumers can start to embrace a more “modular” approach to banking. Regulators in the UK and EU have now forced the banks to open up customer data to third parties in the form of secure APIs creating more choice on where and how consumers manage their money. Open banking heralds a transformational change to banking for personal customers and small businesses. For the first time innovative and secure apps will provide personalised services and information to cover all financial needs in one place, and make it easy for people to find out what bank account and services are best for them. However, for consumers to fully embrace the benefits a financial services eco-system has to offer, we need to find a better way to enable people to verify their identity at the point of access and allow firms to meet their requirement to carry out due diligence processes to satisy anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) regulations. All too often this is a manual process with the provider requiring paper copies or sight of original key documents to open even a basic savings account. Hardly in keeping with the digital world. Ironically, it’s often quicker and easier for someone to take out a payday loan online than open a current or savings account or transfer assets in an existing account to a new provider. That’s why TISA – a consumer focused association with over 180-member firms from across the financial services industry involved in the supply and distribution of savings and investment products and services – has set out to establish a federated digital identity eco-system for the financial services sector, which will be interoperable with other sectors. This will enable UK citizens to securely identity themselves to UK financial institutions and use this identity across a range of financial products and services, so removing the need for people to repeatedly verify their identity. This will deliver a positive customer experience to encourage take-up of financial products and services. The digital identity is being designed to provide a level of identity assurance that meets current regulations and will utilise existing and proven sources of validation. A full emulation for the Digital Identity has been successfully completed and TISA’s project is now entering the pilot testing phase to assess the technical and operational aspects, test consumer needs/expectations, specify and validate the underpinning standards and define the required technology architecture. The digital identity can be the catalyst for an exciting, innovative and dynamic technology driven financial services marketplace of the future and is part of a key workstream for TISA encapsulating a number of financial services digitalisation initiatives and FinTech support services.

WHAT ARE ROBO-ADVISORS KNOWN FOR? Probably ‘low-cost’ is among the first terms that come to mind. And this is a fair description. The cost-to-serve (product + service) is roughly one third of that of a typical wealth manager.

This is obviously reflected in the pricing, which in the UK hovers around the 50 bps mark, depending on investment strategy and AuM level – again, around one third to one half of the traditional norm. And this is a good thing, right? Maybe not.

IS IT ALL ABOUT THE PRICE?

Advisors often believe that their customers are very price sensitive, and that competitive pricing is key to success. But as we can see from many examples, even for commodities such as water, there is always room to differentiate on price. Surely, this is the same for wealth management. We do believe that the transparency of the digital age could lead to lower pricing in the short term, and indeed price wars.

ROBO INVESTING EUROPE 2018

In the longer-term, though, digital transparency will enable clients to share their experiences and rate providers according to the quality of delivery. Who wins in this scenario? Not necessarily the lowest-cost provider. Transparency will reveal who is adding value, and adding value will become the best way to drive sales. Economics dictates that if you are charging rock-bottom rates, the value you can afford to deliver will be correspondingly low, compared to those who charge more. So ‘lowestcost’ may not be an attractive long-term strategy after all. While there will always be a section of the investing public who care only about price, the majority of clients a) want more than just a bare bones solution and b) differ widely with respect to what extra features they want. This brings us to a problem with wealth management as a whole. The lack of choice and customization.

WHY CHOICE IS VITAL

Whereas most businesses will give you a service if you are prepared to pay for it, wealth management firms define service levels for customers based on asset levels. The lack of customization in wealth management stems from the price model. What a client pays (in pounds and pence) is linked, somewhat arbitrarily in the case of noninvestment-related services such as planning, to the assets they have, rather than the services they want.

The traditional wealth manager space focuses on high net worth clients. But the real blue ocean opportunity lies with the mass-investor. In the US, particularly in the owner-managed RIA (Registered Investment Advisor) space, many new fee models are emerging that make these possibilities a reality. Subscription models such as that Solari Financial match price with value, while enabling choice.

Here, new entrants with sophisticated platforms are ideally placed to innovate. Traditionally, wealth managers have assumed (for the sake of convenience, more than anything else) that clients don’t know what they want when it comes to wealth management. According to a survey of clients in 2017, conducted by Simon-Kucher & Partners, it turns out that clients have very clear opinions on what they want, and not only with regard to how their money is invested. Clients have clear and diverse preferences for the amount of support they want in implementing a financial plan, what issues they want it to cover, how they interact with their advisor, and how often. If clients are prepared to pay for customization, we should offer it to them for a fair price. Not what you charge, but how you charge. And if we are going down the path of a more flexible offering structure, we also need a different pricing structure. The survey showed that clients are not only open to such alternatives, but generally prefer them to the standard AuM-based pricing model.

For ‘fixed’ services, non-traditional price metrics such as subscription fees make more sense, are more stable, and more impactful on the top and bottom line. Furthermore, models that do not hinge on AuM-based metrics make it possible to offer human-intensive, value-rich services to non-traditional segments such as Gen X and Gen Y. One signal defect of the AuM-based fee model is that it generates very unexciting revenues in the case of clients with lower asset values. In the case of a client with less than £50,000 in AuM, a relatively small subscription fee of £10 / month is far more impactful than a single additional basis point. In the case of a high-net-worth client, of course, it is completely insignificant.

ROBO INVESTING EUROPE 2018

What’s the Best Way to Get Invested in the Market? By Victor Haghani and James White, Elm Partners

Is it better to jump in all at once, to average-in over time, or to wait for a market correction?

DECIDE YOUR DESIRED LONG-TERM ALLOCATION Since robo-advisers have made a point of attacking the market using aggressively low AuM thresholds in an attempt to reach under-served, non-traditional segments, why should they be left behind when it comes to fee innovation?

A WORD OF CAUTION

Innovating on price can be lucrative, but it is also a risky business. It requires the provider to understand the need segments in the target client base (i.e. what different clients are prepared to pay for), and correctly gauge the acceptable price levels and metrics for those who want more than a bare-bones solution. Furthermore, these prices must be communicated in such a way that the value is fully processed, given that such fees for financial advice are not yet common or widely accepted. Finally, the migration of existing clients to future price models is always a sensitive issue, and requires decisions to be made on grandfathering, and whether to soft or hard migrate the remainder. While such issues are difficult to surmount, we have seen in other industries time and again that they are not insurmountable given enough research and pre-testing. We suggest that the mantra of the robo-profession needs to shift from ‘price’ to ‘value’, and from ‘low-cost’ to ‘custom’ offerings. There is no reason why mass-retail wealth should not be profitable.

You first need to figure out how much to allocate to equities, which will depend on your view of the expected return and risk of equities and your degree of risk aversion. Over a long horizon, equity returns are driven by earnings and dividends, which are easier to predict than sentiment-driven short-term changes in valuation. Many analysts currently estimate the world equity market has a long-term expected compound return above inflation of around 4% to 5%, based on today’s earnings yield of about 5% and dividend yield of around 2.5%. You’ll need to combine your expected return estimate with your view of the risk of owning equities and your risk aversion profiles to arrive at a target that feels right to you. All else equal, it will be higher or lower depending on your forecast of the return of equities, and only if your expected return is zero (or negative) would you want to have no equities at all.

HOW MUCH TO WORRY ABOUT THE SHORT-TERM? If your short-term forecast is different than your long-term one, it is the short-term one that should primarily drive your decision. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of evidence warning us that it’s very difficult to forecast short-term equity returns, as conveyed by the axiom, “time in the market is more valuable than timing the market.” When equities are cheap, measured by any of the common valuation multiples, future returns have been higher than when they are expensive. Although this is already accounted for in long-term forecasts, some investors worry that short-term performance is more dependent on valuation reverting to fair value than is actually the case. While we don’t have enough historical data to draw precise conclusions, what we do have suggests that the commonly used valuation multiples don’t give us much help in predicting short-term performance. For example, if we look back over the past 130 years of U.S. equity market experience when P/Es were in the highest decile, subsequent oneyear real returns were lower than average, but still had a mean positive annual return of 3.4%. This is not to say that you can’t have an expectation that equities are going to go down 10% next year, in which case you really shouldn’t own any equities at all. It’s just that

ROBO INVESTING EUROPE 2018

if you think equities are going down next year, based primarily on equities being overvalued, know that history is not on your side.

THE BENEFITS (AND COST) OF WADING IN GENTLY Once you determine the right allocation, should you immediately make the adjustment and move your allocation to the optimal point? An incremental adjustment over time (“averaging-in”) is not financially optimal. However, averaging-in provides a psychic benefit; if the markets go up over the period that we’re averaging-in, then we’ll be pleased we got some of our savings invested at the beginning, and if the markets go down we can be happy we didn’t move all the way right at the beginning.

WHEN DOES ½ = ¾? Building up your allocation to the desired level over time leaves some expected return on the table. But, from an expected utility framework, the cost is quite low. This is because as we increase our allocation to equities, our expected gain goes up in proportion to our allocation, but the cost of risk grows faster than in proportion to our allocation. In the case of the most popular family of utility functions, it goes up quadratically, that is, in proportion to the allocation squared. In other words, we should require four times the compensation to bear two times the risk. Thus, moving halfway to an optimal allocation gets approximately three-quarters of the value of going the whole way, and going two-thirds of the way to optimal gets us about 90% of the value of going the full distance. Recall also that at the optimal point, the risk-adjusted return of our investment is equal to half the gross expected return. Combining these two effects means that averaging-in to your optimal allocation costs relatively little in terms of risk-adjusted return.

WARNING: NOT ALL AVERAGING-IN PLANS ARE CREATED EQUAL The averaging-in I’ve been discussing is a disciplined program of investing a fraction of your savings into the market regularly, over a pre-defined period. Some investors are attracted to the idea of contingent averaging-in, where they plan to increase their allocation to equities only if they fall below some target price level. The problem here is that the investor is taking the risk of the market going up and never (or at least for generations) coming back down again to the target level, and thereby incurring a very significant opportunity cost. For an idea of how bad this can be, we need only think about an investor who in early 2009 set a target 10% below the level of the markets, and is still waiting to invest while investors who averaged-in to the equity markets nearly tripled their investment.

CONCLUSION Once you’ve decided on your target allocation to equities, ideally with greater weight on the long-term return driven by earnings and dividends than on predicted short-term expected changes in sentiment, the next step is to decide how to get to that target. Choosing a plan is ultimately a matter of personal preference, as any approach other than moving straight to your optimal allocation is financially suboptimal. However, some plans are less sub-optimal than others. For example, averaging-in over one year has quite a low expected cost. More efficient still would be to immediately move about 50% of the way to optimal (thereby getting 75% of the benefit), and then moving the rest of the way over the course of a year. At the other extreme, following a contingent plan that only goes into action when the price of equities drops by some threshold amount is a risky approach with a high expected cost. In the end, any plan is a good one if it overcomes the inertia and anxiety that holds you back from your chosen investment destination. Once you’re in for a while, another powerful human trait, forgetfulness, will make you wonder why you spent as much time as you did contemplating the plunge.

Victor Haghani is the Founder and CIO and James White is CEO of Elm Partners, which offers its Active Index Investing® approach via Separately Managed Accounts at Fidelity and for nonU.S. investors, through a Cayman Islands fund. Email them at victor@elmfunds.com or james@ elmfunds.com.

ROBO INVESTING EUROPE 2018

Collaboration is key in automated advice By Simon Binney, Business Development Director at Wealth Wizards

The financial advisory sector has seen a lot of change over the past few years, much of it driven by new technologies and a wave of new market entrants. While we are seeing consolidation and innovation in response, this is just the start. So if you thought the merry-go-round was slowing down, then grab hold tightly because it is only going to accelerate. What we do know is that change brings with it opportunities, and, in order to build a picture of where these opportunities lie, we need to examine the component parts – the reality for our clients, influences on the market and those who are successfully demonstrating how to win in a rapidly evolving environment through collaboration and partnerships.

WORKING SMARTER, NOT HARDER Shaping the sector so it is fit for purpose and providing cost-effective, regulated advice available to the many rather than the few requires a new way of thinking. Historically, banks and financial institutions have taken a stance of ‘self-build’ in order to develop home-grown solutions. This may have been acceptable in an age where financial advice was the privilege of the higher net worth individual. The speed of technological innovation is outstripping the pace of change within larger organisations, however, putting them under pressure to come up with a new way of adopting new advice solutions. These organisations possess a major advantage when it comes to consumers – they have their trust and their reach but lack the innovation required to provide the financial service solutions their consumers demand. Existing providers and fintechs are increasingly working together to bring innovations and efficiencies to market, including HSBC & Bud, Smart Pensions and Legal & General and Wealth Wizards and LV=. Some of the new banks such as Monzo and Starling Bank have signalled they too are looking at partnership opportunities. For back-office systems, one excellent example of collaboration is Intelliflo, which is building an eco-system around Intelligent Office with access to multiple third-party services. It is clear therefore the long-term winners will be organisations that recognise what they excel at and then collaborate with complementary service providers to deliver compelling ‘end-to-end’ solutions their customers love. What we will see is an increase in partnerships between the old and the new as the more nimble-minded and creative fintech providers join forces with the giants of today to deliver trailblazing, fully-regulated advisory solutions.

ROBO INVESTING EUROPE 2018

As technology entices more and more consumers to trust online and robo-advisory services, the demand for professional, fully-regulated online advice will increase. This provides a particular opportunity for advisers to capitalise on the ‘normalisation’ of financial advice. In reality, however, the only way advisers will be able to meet the demands of this new expanding sector is through automation to support them – that is, automation designed to do the heavy lifting such as the management of compliance and risk. In turn, advisory firms will find it easier to scale their business rapidly and effectively.

Speakers Alberto Cuccu Chief Client Solution Officer, Objectway

The future is more certain than you might think. What is clear is that, together we can shape a strong, competitive advice sector by recognising we all bring different strengths to the table – from fintech and robo-advisers to long-standing advisory companies with thousands of clients. Through collaboration, we can deliver excellence in fully-regulated advice that works for both existing clients and for a new market and a new generation of tech-savvy savers and investors looking for convenience and affordability; and for many, advice for the first time. This is a model that will not only ensure the ongoing success of advice firms, but also contribute to increasing the wealth of the whole nation.

Alberto serves as Chief Client Solution Officer and Director of ObjectWay S.p.A. Previously, Mr Cuccu was the Chief Operating Officer of the Financial Software Unit at Objectway and has been a partner and director at the firm since 2007. He graduated from the Università di Pisa with qualifications in computer science.

Anna Wallace Head of Innovation, Financial Conduct Authority Anna heads up the FCA’s Innovation Hub, a unit that provides direct support to innovators in financial services, and was featured recently on the Business Insider’s list of the 40 ‘coolest people in fintech’. She has over 10 years’ experience in public policy from her time at the UK Government, European Commission and the UK financial regulator. Anna has been Press Secretary to the EU Commissioner for External Relations and Private Secretary to two First Ministers of Scotland and the CEO of the FSA.

Benedetta Arese Lucini Co-founder, Oval Money Benedetta is the former CEO of Uber Italy and now co-founder and CEO of Oval Money, one of Europe’s leading savings and financial education apps. Oval’s thousands of users are achieving impressive results, with the average user saving £120 per month. The company is set to announce a new crowdfunding campaign in addition to a completed private placement. With this funding, Oval will embark on developing the industry’s first multi-sided marketplace for savings and investment products, creating a truly end-toend savings solutions for its users.

Blake Wood Director of Program Innovation, Envestnet Blake leads the Program Innovation team, which supports the business development efforts, strategic client engagements as well as product release communications. Blake has over 15 years’ experience and has previously worked at Ameritrade and the Chicago Stock Exchange. As of September 2016, Envestnet supports over 51,000 advisors, and 3.6 million investor accounts and over $1 trillion in total assets.

ROBO INVESTING EUROPE 2018

Speakers Clara Durodie CEO, Cognitive Finance Group Clara is a business technologist and thought leader in Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions for Financial Services. She established Cognitive Finance Group, an advisory and investment firm specialising in applied AI. Prior to this, she served as an Executive and Board Director at Ackermans & van Haaren (AvH), a financial services company in London and Luxembourg.

Chris Truce Head of Fintech, Saxo Bank Chris joined Saxo in 2007 and is responsible for the commercialisation of Saxo’s OpenAPI. He has over 12 years’ experience in the financial services industry, specialising in digital business transformation and API developments. Prior to Saxo, he held several commercial sales positions in both Australian and international investment banks such as ING Bank, Macquarie Bank and ANZ.

Deborah Fuhr

Speakers Evgeny Smirnov Founder & CEO, 4xxi Evgeny has 12 years’ experience in the industry and is the founder and senior manager of several technology start-ups. His expertise includes scalable solution and development for: mobile apps, APIs, robo advisory and wealth management dashboards. He is a graduate of the Saint Petersburg State University and holds a PhD in Mathematics and Astronomy.

Fahd Rachidy Founder & CEO, ABAKA ABAKA enables employers to improve workplace savings awareness, to directly communicate and engage with their staff, and helps to put employees in control of their personal expenses, savings and pensions. ABAKA helps employees develop their own financial knowledge levels by providing them with timely financial advice and personalised nudging. Fahd holds a Masters in Macroeconomics from the University of Paris I: Panthéon-Sorbonne.

Efi Pylarinou

Managing Partner, ETFGI

Co-founder, Daily Fintech

Deborah Fuhr is the managing partner and co-founder of ETFGI, an independent research and consultancy firm launched in 2012 in London. Previously, she served as global head of ETF research and implementation strategy and as a managing director at BlackRock/Barclays Global Investors from 2008 – 2011. Deborah Fuhr was named Recipient of 100 Women in Finance’s 2017 European Industry Leadership Award.

Efi Pylarinou, Ph.D. in Finance and seasoned Wall Street professional who has grown into a global Fintech influencer. Included in the Women in Fintech powerlist by Innovate Finance; in Women in Fintech DACH social ranking; and the Global Fintech 80. Advisor on financial services digital transformation with more than 97,000 Linkedin followers and a domain focus on Digital Wealth Management & Capital Markets. Co-founder of Daily Fintech, an open-source global insight driven platform with over 19,000 subscribers and of the Fintech Genome, a P2P knowledge platform for Fintech conversations.

Dr. Ella Ella Rabener Rabener CMO & Co-founder, Scalable Capital Experienced management consultant & e-commerce entrepreneur. Since 2015, she has been the CMO and the co-founder of the UK business of Scalable Capital, a digital investment manager set to disrupt the finance sector in Europe. She previously spent three years launching and building Westwing.ru, Russia’s no. 1 online destination for home & living products and spent more than seven years as a consultant at McKinsey & Company in various locations.

Gianluca Corradi Director, Simon-Kucher & Partners Gianluca Corradi is a Director at Simon-Kucher & Partners, a global consulting firm specialised in marketing, strategy and pricing. He is responsible for the Corporate Banking practice in the London office. Gianluca leads consulting projects for a wide range of international clients, including Barclays, RBS, HSBC, Scotiabank, Intesa Sanpaolo, CIBC, PKO Bank Polski and several other financial institutions.

ROBO INVESTING EUROPE 2018

Speakers James Gin

Speakers Katie Derham

Founder & Chief Scientist, DataSine

TV & Radio Presenter, BBC

At award-winning fintech startup DataSine, James’s team is combining AI and psychology to build the next generation of engagement tools for financial services. Having specialised in machine learning after 5 years in financial risk management, he provides a start-up perspective on designing, building and scaling data science products with banking and insurance partners. James is interested in leveraging unstructured data with natural language processing, and augmenting machine learning software to be more explainable and actionable.

Katie began her broadcasting career in news and current affairs for the BBC and ITV, for whom she was the broadcaster’s youngest ever newsreader, where her role as anchor meant she covered everything from elections to royal weddings and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. 2015 also saw the launch of Peanut and Crumb, a production and media strategy company which Katie set up with the BAFTA nominated producer and director Jane Gerber.

Joe Parkin Head of Wealth & Retail, iShares BlackRock Joe Parkin is Head of UK Wealth and Retail at iShares, where he is responsible for the distribution of BlackRock’s passive business in the UK, which includes sales and relationships with private banks, wealth managers, advisers, discretionary clients, D2C and adviser platforms, and digital clients. Mr Parkin’s previous roles at BlackRock included acting as Chief of Staff for the iShares business in EMEA. Prior to joining BlackRock in April 2012, Mr Parkin worked at Goldman Sachs for 6 years.

James Alexander

Monica Woodley Global Head of Content & PR, Legg Mason Prior to Legg Mason, Monica was the Editorial Director for thought leadership at the Economist Group. She managed a team of editors across EMEA who produce bespoke research programmes for a range of clients. She personally managed research programmes for Barclays, BlackRock, State Street, BNY Mellon, Goldman Sachs, Mastercard, EY, Deloitte and PwC, on topics ranging from the impact of financial regulation, to the development of innovation ecosystems, to how consumer demand is driving retail innovation.

Mario Alves

Consultant, Accenture

Head of Sales & Partner Management, Aixigo

James joined KPMG in 2016 from AXA, where he was part of the strategy team, focusing on wealth and investment management. Prior to that he worked in a range of strategy and corporate development roles at Ignis and Investec Asset Management and at Barclays Wealth.

Mario has been working with Aixigo since 2012 with customers and partners in utilising digitalisation within the investment business across all channels. He is an expert in retail and private banking, with a special focus on investment and advisory in MiFID related markets and products. His experience combines frontline experiences as advisor and manager within several financial service institutions, as well as a consultant and leader in advisory and software companies.

Joe Hancock Cyber Security Lead, Mishcon de Reya Leading Cyber Security services at Mishcon de Reya. Providing strategic cyber advice, helping organisations to develop and optimise their investments in cyber risk management, as well as protecting their reputation and stakeholders. Through a variety of consulting roles he has helped organisations prepare for cyber breaches and data loss events across global sectors including: Retail, Financial Services as well as for government.

Meghna Mukerjee Senior Analyst, Aite Group Meghna Mukerjee is a senior analyst on the Wealth Management team writing about market trends as well as regulatory and digital shifts impacting wealth managers, private banks, independent asset managers, and family offices across Europe and the AsiaPacific. She has a specific focus on regulations such as Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II), the Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2), and the Common Reporting Standard (CRS), and she also writes about private banking business models and market opportunities.

ROBO INVESTING EUROPE 2018

Speakers Miles Cheetham

Speakers Paul Resnik

Head of Customer Engagement, Open Banking

Co-founder, FinaMetrica

Miles is the Head of Customer Engagement at Open Banking. Open Banking is the entity that has been set up by the UK Competition and Markets Authority to create innovative technology (APIs), data standards and the governance structures which will enable the UK to implement Open Banking in January 2018. Miles has an in-depth experience of customer-led digital product having also worked for companies including Vodafone, MTN, Sky, Verizon and Paym.

Paul co-founded FinaMetrica which provides risk tolerance profiling and a comprehensive Toolkit including several suitability algorithms. Since its 1998 Australian launch, FinaMetrica has completed almost one million risk profiles for over 5,500 human financial advisers which includes 5 Robos in 20 countries. FinaMetrica’s algorithms map risk scores to the multi asset portfolio suites of more than 30 investment managers including several of the worlds largest.

Paul McNamara

Patrick Shami

CEO, Evalue

Head of Quant Development, Quantfolio

Paul is a qualified actuary and began his career in Ireland, working at New Ireland Assurance and Bank of Ireland before moving to McKinsey and Company. He then worked at AXA and HBOS before taking senior positions at Standard Life and later Barclays, where he was Managing Director of Insurance and Investments, before becoming Chief Executive of IFG Group. He has held several non-executive directorship roles during his career. He holds an MBA from CASS Business School at City University London, where he remains a member of the MBA Advisory Board.

Quantfolio enables banks and wealth managers to deliver robo-advice solutions to their customers. As Head of Quantitative Development, Patrick is responsible for developing the firm’s core algorithms and software, and he works with customers to tailor them to their needs. He holds BS and MS degrees in Economics and Engineering, is a Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst, a former Analyst at McKinsey & Company, and has spent over 20 years working in technology and finance.

Paolo Sironi Fintech Thought Leader, IBM Paolo Sironi is IBM’s thought leader for Wealth Management and FinTech Analytics. Prior to IBM, he founded a Fintech which became a part of IBM (2012) following the acquisition of Algorithmics, a world leader of risk management solutions. Paolo was previously head of market and counterparty risk modeling at Banca Intesa Sanpaolo. Paulo is a recognised author of books about portfolio management, regulation and Fintech innovation.

Pierre E. Mendelsohn Founder & CEO, Alpima After a global career with leading financial institutions, Pierre founded ALPIMA in October 2014 to give professional and institutional investors a new service and investment experience focused on systematic investing and asset allocation. An engineer at heart, Pierre is passionate about science and technology and how they can make finance better for investors. Before founding ALPIMA, Pierre spent two decades on the trading floors of leading investment banks in New York, London and Hong Kong.

Romi Savova Founder & CEO, PensionBee PensionBee is the leading online pension manager which Romi founded to simplify pension savings in the UK, following a harrowing pension transfer experience of her own. Romi earned an MBA from Harvard Business School as a George F. Baker scholar and graduated summa cum laude from Emory University. In 2017, she was named Entrepreneur of the Year at computing.co.uk’s Women in IT Excellence awards.

Richard Peers Wealth Industry Lead, Microsoft Richard is the Director of Financial Services at Microsoft. He is the industry lead for private and retail wealth. This includes developing the market and partner ecosystem. He specialises in emerging technologies and building strategic alliances within digital banking.

ROBO INVESTING EUROPE 2018

Speakers Simon Binney

Speakers Vincent Denoiseux

Business Development Director, Wealth Wizards

Head of Quantitative Strategy, Deutsche Passive Asset Management

Simon has been running businesses and consulting on online benefits and pensions solutions since 1999. Simon has been instrumental in developing innovative technology solutions that drive engagement for employees and return on investment for large corporates across all sectors, both in the UK and globally. Over the past 16 years, Simon has built strong professional relationships with organisations such as Microsoft, Citi and HSBC helping them to deliver their pensions and benefit ambitions.

Vincent has 15years of experience in portfolio construction, quantitative research and derivatives structuring. Previously, he was building fund linked investment solutions at Exane Derivatives (BNP Paribas), particularly on hedge funds and liquid absolute return strategies. For six years, he was a lecturer in Quantitative Portfolio Management at Ecole Centrale Paris.

Susanne Chishti CEO, FinTech Circle Susanne is the CEO of FinTech Circle, Europe’s 1st Angel Network focused on FinTech opportunities and the FinTech Tours. She is also Co-Editor of the Bestseller “The FinTech Book” - the first Crowd-Sourced Book on FinTech globally. Recognised in the European Digital Financial Services ‘Power 50’ 2015, an independent ranking of the most influential people in digital financial services in Europe. Susanne has been selected as one of the 100 leading Women in FinTech.

Will Trout Head of Wealth Management Research, Celent Will is a highly visible financial services commentator charged with spearheading the growth of retained advisory and research services for the IT strategy arm of global technology consulting practice. He is a keynote speaker on digital advice and is widely quoted in publications such as Bloomberg, CNBC, Financial Times, New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

Zoe Zambakides Thomas Bosshard CEO, Adviscent Thomas is a co-founder of Adviscent and has over 10 years’ experience in financial services. He was previously the CEO of Atorex and worked at UBS as a senior project manager. Thomas spent 5 years in the media industry working on solutions for content contribution and distribution. Thomas is a graduate of the University of Zurich.

Uday Nimmakayala CEO & Founder, WealthObjects Uday Nimmakayala is the Founder & CEO of WealthObjects, a B2BC digital wealth and automated investing platform. He has over 12 years’ experience in the Investment and Wealth management sector within various operational functional roles and a good understanding of the financial services regulations. He previously worked at M&G Investments (Prudential Group), Rothschild Family Investment Office, and S&P Capital IQ.

Brand Director, Killik Zoe is responsible for inspiring a new generation of savers and investors for Investment House, Killik & Co. Her current focuses include building savings solutions that bridge a new world digital experience with Killik & Co’s traditional investment advice and expertise, including the development of two client apps. Zoe has also directed the full company rebrand, while also sitting on the company executive board. Zoe joined Killik & Co from the gin distiller Sipsmith, where she was Head of Brand & GINspiration.

ROBO INVESTING EUROPE 2018

Main Sponsor Chris Truce Deutsche Asset Management With EUR 710 billion of assets under management (as of September 30, 2017), Deutsche Asset Management is one of the world’s leading investment management organisations. Deutsche Asset Management offers individuals and institutions traditional and alternative investments across all major asset classes.

Ella ABAKA Rabener ABAKA is a Financial Wellbeing Platform for employees, powered by Artificial Intelligence. ABAKA enables employers and pension providers to directly Engage, Educate and Empower their members, in order to improve their financial wellbeing. ABAKA enables employers to improve workplace savings awareness, to directly communicate and engage with their staff, and helps to put employees in control of their personal expenses, savings and pensions. ABAKA helps employees develop their own financial knowledge levels by providing them with timely financial advice and personalised nudging.

Fahd Clever Rachidy Adviser

Partners Ella Rabener Adviscent Adviscent is a FinTech startup specialising in innovative information management solutions for advisory processes. It developed Interactive Advisor, a content and personalisation hub that integrates wealth management research processes into one platform. Interactive Advisor’s intelligent recommendation engine helps financial advisors deliver content that fully matches client profiles and preferences at any point within the client journey.

Fahd Rachidy Aixigo Aixigo is one of the largest providers of software for financial services, software for banks and a specialist in the topic of “digitalisation of the financial sector” in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Aixigo offers highly scalable software solutions for the multichannel digitalisation of the financial sector in the area of investment advice and asset management.

Benedetta Arese Lucini ALPIMA Alpima is a new-generation advisory and technology firm focused on digital investing, systematic strategies and asset allocation. ALPIMA’s team combines decades of handson markets experience with the latest advances in financial engineering, data science and technology. ALPIMA uses technology and data science to help its clients build intelligent investment solutions and make smart, informed decisions. ALPIMA works with some of the largest and most prestigious asset managers, wealth managers and product.

Clever Adviser Technology Ltd has created innovative solutions to assist top tier IFA practitioners in both the portfolio construction and monitoring stages of the investment advice process. Every month, CleverAdviser monitors the funds held by clients, identifies under-performers to be sold and selects a replacement fund to be bought from the same sector.

Benedetta ETFGI Arese Lucini ETFGI is a leading independent research and consulting firm founded in 2012 in London offering subscription research service covering trends in the global ETF eco-system. They focus on providing thought leadership; publishing independent research on the ETF industry, products, applications, competitor analysis; providing education and assistance to investors on product comparison, asset allocation implementation and offering customised research.

Benedetta Envestnet Arese Lucini Envestnet, Inc. (NYSE: ENV) is a leading provider of intelligent systems for wealth management and financial wellness. Envestnet’s unified technology enhances advisor productivity and strengthens the wealth management process. Envestnet empowers enterprises and advisors to more fully understand their clients and deliver better outcomes.

Benedetta EValue Arese Lucini EValue provides financial modelling solutions that are designed to engage and inform individuals about the potential risk and return from different retirement income choices they will need to make. Their heritage originates from Towers Watson, a leading global risk management and consulting group. EValue supports over 80% of UK financial services institutions.

ROBO INVESTING EUROPE 2018

Ella Rabener FinaMetrica The FinaMetrica Risk Tolerance Toolkit™ helps advisors and enterprises create lifetime relationships, through better advice that results in clients who refer more, invest more and remain suitably invested through market highs and lows.

Fahd Rachidy Financial Technology Partners Financial Technology Partners (“FT Partners”) is the only investment banking firm focused exclusively on the FinTech sector. They broadly define the sector as the dynamic convergence of technology-based solutions and financial services. FT Partners was recently recognised as “Dealmaker of the Year” and “Investment Banking Firm of the Year” by The M&A Advisor.

Fahd Rachidy Microsoft Microsoft Financial Services empowers financial institutions to reimagine the customer experience, enable a secure and productive digital workplace, optimise operations and risk management and transform products with real-time predictive digital processes.

Benedetta Mishcon deArese Reya Lucini Mishcon de Reya LLP is a British law firm with offices in London and New York. Founded in 1937, it currently employs more than 800 people with over 500 lawyers. In March 2017, the firm was announced Law Firm of the Year at the Legal Business Awards.

Benedetta Arese Lucini Objectway Benedetta iShares BlackRock Arese Lucini iShares is the global product leader in exchange traded funds (ETFs). With over 800 ETFs globally and more than $1 trillion in assets under management, iShares helps clients around the world build the core of their portfolios, meet specific investment goals and implement market views. The iShares Funds are bought and sold like common stocks on securities exchanges.

Benedetta London Stock Arese Exchange Lucini London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) is an international markets infrastructure business. Its diversified global business focuses on capital formation, intellectual property and risk and balance sheet management. LSEG operates an open access model, offering choice and partnership to customers across all of its businesses. The Group operates a broad range of international equity, ETF, bond and derivatives markets, including London Stock Exchange. The Group can trace its history back to 1698.

Objectway is a leading provider of financial software and digital solutions to the worldwide financial services industry, with clients in 15 countries. Its awardwinning software platforms are the trusted choice of leading wealth and investment management firms across the globe - from EMEA to Canada to Central America. From its offices in Italy, UK, Belgium, Ireland and South Africa, Objectway has more than 500 employees supporting approximately 100,000 investment professionals to manage more than one trillion euros in wealth.

Benedetta Arese Lucini Quantfolio Quantfolio is a Bergen-based Fintech company delivering “AI-in-a-box” components for banks & wealth managers with a digital presence. Through open API´s and machine learning algorithms they empower banks and WM’s with their AI investment components to provide customers with anything from automated low cost savings portfolios to sophisticated investment strategies normally reserved for HNW individuals.

Benedetta Arese Lucini PlanPlus Ella Rabener Level 39 Level 39 is the world’s most connected tech community. They support fast-growth businesses in three clear ways - giving access to world-class customers, talent and infrastructure. Through expert mentors, access to Canary Wharf’s dynamic workspace, a packed events calendar and best-in-class facilities they help businesses achieve scale.

PlanPlus Inc. is a privately owned corporation with its Head Office located northeast of Toronto, Canada. For 25 years, PlanPlus has developed software and training tools for use by financial institutions, professional advisors and the consuming public to perform personal financial and investment planning. PlanPlus is a world-recognized firm with its groundbreaking software PlanPlus Planit and industry-leading training and service offerings. PlanPlus is being used in over 30 countries and in several languages including English, French, Simplified Chinese, German, Hungarian, and Russian. Additional languages are being developed with demand.

ROBO INVESTING EUROPE 2018

Ella Rabener Jobs in ETFs

Benedetta Arese Simon-Kucher & Partners Lucini Simon-Kucher & Partners is a global consulting firm specialising in TopLine Power®, which encompasses strategy, marketing, pricing, and sales. Founded in 1985, the company now has more than 1,100 professionals in 34 offices worldwide. Their practice is built on evidence-based, practical strategies for profit improvement via the top line. Simon-Kucher & Partners is regarded as the world’s leading pricing advisor and thought leader.

Jobs in ETFs is the world’s first ETF career platform and specialised recruitment provider in the ETF industry. Jobs in ETFs is focused on growing the Exchange Traded Funds industry, educating and inspiring fresh as well as established talent. They help candidates start or progress their career and provide access to the most exciting job openings within the sector. Their team offers hiring and headhunting services to ETF companies looking to build and grow their teams and helps create innovative campaigns to attract talent.

Ella Rabener TISA TISA is a unique industry-wide membership organisation. Their mission is to bring the UK financial services savings industry together to promote collective engagement, to deliver solutions and to champion innovation for the benefit of citizens, the industry and the nation.

Ella Rabener Wealth Wizards Wealth Wizards are the UK’s first online independent financial adviser who offer fully regulated advice via simple online applications. They have pioneered the combination of chartered financial planning, actuarial science and smart software technology to deliver expert advice at an affordable cost via the internet. They work directly with employers, or alongside pension consultants, to offer pension and retirement advice to company employees. They also provide white label solutions to large financial services brands.

Media Ella Rabener BrightTALK BrightTALK brings professionals and businesses together to learn and grow. Thousands of thought leaders are actively sharing their insights, their ideas and their most up-todate knowledge with professionals all over the globe through the technologies that BrightTALK has created. At BrightTALK they believe people learn the most when they hear directly from those who know the subject best, and we believe that this experience is enhanced through a dialog between speakers and the audience.

Ella Rabener Raconteur Ella Rabener WealthObjects WealthObjects helps financial institutions launch a pure digital (robo) or hybrid digital advisory models acting as a technology partner. They provide a ready-to-go platform or Modular APIs to launch a customised automated digital wealth or hybrid digital advisory platform faster and at a fraction of the cost.

Ella 4xxi Rabener 4xxi is a world-class web & mobile development company helping Startups, SMB and Enterprises to solve their business problems, accomplish goals, increase revenues and cut costs. They have a deep product expertise in FinTech, EdTech and MedTech industry. They create products with Big Data, Artifical Intelligence and Machine Learning.

Raconteur is a premium publishing house with special reports, digital, research and custom publishing divisions. They are committed to excellence across all their products and services by combining world-class journalism, data analysis, editorial imagery and striking graphic design. Combining editorial rigour with robust research and a refined sense of design craftsmanship, they create clarity and credibility for businesses and brands.

Benedetta Roubini ThoughtLab Arese Lucini Roubini ThoughtLab is a trend-setting research and thought leadership consultancy providing fresh ideas and decision support to help corporate, financial, and government leaders cope with transformative change. By applying advanced analytics, predictive models, digital technology, and expert opinions, their team provides insights into future megatrends and their impact on the world. They specialise in creating 360-degree thought leadership programs that combines mixed methods research with multi-format content and cross-media marketing.

ROBO INVESTING EUROPE 2018

Benedetta Arese Lucini Muckle Muckle (www.muckle.online) launched in June 2016 as the UK’s portal for next generation wealth management - robo advice, micro savings and investment. Based upon the core principle of long-term wealth creation - ‘mony a mickle maks a muckle’ Muckle seeks to engage the next generation of savers and investors.

The Wealthnet & eprivateclient A specialist media business, focused exclusively on the international wealth management sector, online, in print and in person. Their clients include the world’s leading private banks, private wealth managers, hedge funds, family offices, private client lawyers and accountants, tax advisers, trust & fiduciary businesses, regulators and a host of other institutional and corporate service providers. Their market-leading products include: thewealthnet (www.thewealthnet.com), PAM - Private Asset Managers (www.pamonline.com), eprivateclient (www.eprivateclient.com).

Ella Fintech The RabenerTimes The world’s only fintech newspaper, published by Disrupts Media Limited. Everything you need to know about fintech, created and curated by industry leaders, in print and online. Fintech as a definition started trending in recent years as the future of financial services, and of money itself. For those already in the know, this is not news. Fintech isn’t a business sector; it’s dozens of sectors. Everything from high street banks, investment companies, money transfer, FX, fintech is re-engineering these sectors into their next generation.

Ella Rabener Techfoliance Techfoliance is a global provider of FinTech insights and analysis. They partner with the best experts and entrepreneurs worldwide to cover the latest trends in all topics related to Digital Banking, Payments, InsurTech, Blockchain or Artificial Intelligence. Their sites portfolio includes: Techfoliance Europe http://techfoliance.com, Techfoliance LATAM http://techfoliance.com.ar, Techfoliance Africa https://techfoliance.co.za/, Techfoliance Middle East (Coming Soon).

ROBO INVESTING EUROPE 2018

About Us Robo-Investing is the leading digital wealth and investment conference. It showcases the latest in automated propositions, digital technology, design and regulation bringing together an extensive network of practitioners across asset and wealth management and banking. Clients include the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s leading consultants, corporates and fintechs. It has hosted over 1000 delegates from 20 countries with more than 50 institutional and start-up partners and exhibitors. Robo-Investing Europe 2018 is produced by Anthony Christodoulou. He has over 18 yearsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; experience in wealth management, specialising in automated and digital investment and savings propositions. He has founded several companies, worked with leading research and publishing firms and held senior advisory positions at UBS and Merrill Lynch. He regularly comments in the Financial Times and has worked on features with Forbes, CityAm, Investment Week, Morningstar and The Sunday Times. He is a graduate of The London School of Economics.

Contact info@robo-investing.co.uk www.robo-investing.co.uk @roboinvestor #robo2018

Website : www.roboÂ investing.co.uk

Email : info@robo Âinvesting.co.uk

Twitter : @roboinvestor