The History of Robo Advisers
Robo 1.0: The most prevalent form deployed today are where clients’ portfolios get built based on a short online survey. The portfolio construction strategies use underlying ETF baskets weighted between stocks, bonds, and gold. Here we see sustained innovation in the existing industry provided by incumbents, as well as lower-end disruption targeted to clients that are new to investing and prefer low risk.
Robo 2.0: A Hybrid model where artificial intelligence supports the advice and decision making of an adviser, which is particularly potent for estate and tax planning. We see this as a continuation of sustaining innovation by incumbents, but this is starting to introduce new market disruption by going into other non-traditional areas of wealth management, including “life-style/interest” portfolio fund construction and investment.
Robo 3.0: The Present-Future model, a fully automated service combining chatbots, automatic rebalancing, fractional ownership, nudging, back-testing, and strategies underpinned by Algos, Blockchain, artificial intelligence, and machine learning coupled with big data. We see this as new-market disruption. An example here is the ultra-high net worth client who wants to invest in digital currencies but is unable to get enough or any advice from his financial adviser in this investment area.
Market Strategy and Potential Targets
We believe that target markets should be centered on two customer segments to “get the job done”:
1. Use Robo Advisers 1.0 (Robo 1.0) at the lower end while marketing it to new investors who would welcome Robo 1 as a self-service tool for its simplicity and flexibility.
In most emerging markets, the rising numbers of middle class and upper-middle class are looking for opportunities to invest; however, a lack of knowledge and access to information prevent them from investing.
For lower end disruption, simplicity is the defining character. The design of Robo 1 should be simple and easy to understand. Basic applications that are publicly available in the market like Bloom, Robinhood, Stash, and Acorns would serve investors’ needs in the lower-end market. For instance, Stash offers fund investments based on lifestyle preferences and interests, like clean water technology and social media companies. These applications are straightforward, simple to use, and readily adaptable and consumable by new customers. Investors can quickly learn how to invest — they can test the markets based on their interests by investing in a collection of companies that reflect their desires and goals accordingly.
2. Robo 2.0 and 3.0 (Advanced Robo) features would be categorized as sustaining innovation: the elements offered by the latter versions would augment rather than replace the human adviser. The characteristics of the Advanced Robo are more comprehensive, requiring the nuances to be analyzed by human advisers based on automatically generated recommendations.
Human advisers’ recommendations are supported by an in-depth analysis of market trends and potential risks. For the lower-end/new investor disruption, an Advanced Robo might not be appealing as it’s designed to serve higher-end investors that are cultivated by relationships. Based on the reaction of large incumbents who tend to manage high-end clients, Robo 1 will attempt to compete or concede.
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