Get Ready for Wealth Management and Asset Management Democratization
I just stumbled across this pretty interesting article about the ongoing mutual fund fee dispersion and especially the quite evident decrease in mutual fund and ETF fees. Some past academic research, such as Iannotta and Navone (2012) and Haslem (2015), has already pointed out that there is no straightforward answer to the question why mutual fund fee dispersion exists, and whether there is an overall trend towards lower fund fees. But there is substantial evidence showing that mutual fund expense ratios have been in decline for the past two decades and there is a similar phenomenon going on in both actively managed and index mutual funds. 1)See: Collins, S. & Duvall, D. (2016). “Trends in the Expenses and Fees of Funds, 2016“ ICI Research Perspective 23(3) Furthermore, as Cooper, Halling, and Yang (2009) argue, there is “an important and multi-dimensional puzzle regarding the fees charged in the mutual fund industry.” Hu,…
Varainhoidon suuresta murroksesta on saatu vasta esimakua
Finanssialalla on käynnissä suuri murroksen ja mullistuksen tila, jota Pekka Puustinen on kutsunut vaihdantavallankumoukseksi. 1)Puustinen, P. (2013). Vaihdantavallankumous: Finanssipalvelun uusi logiikka. Helsinki: Talentum Vaihdantavallankumous on ollut käynnissä jo vuosikymmeniä, sillä “useimmilla toimialoilla ymmäretään jo, että arvo syntyy asiakkaiden oman toiminnan seurauksena tavaroita tai palveluja käytäessä”. 2)Puustinen 2013, s. 18 Käynnissä on siis varsin suuri murros ja mullistus, kun “tuoteskeskeinen näkemys vaihdantaan sekä perinteiset asiakkaan ja yrityksen roolit muuttuvat perusteellisesti”. 3)Puustinen 2013, s. 23 Suomessakin on keskusteltu useaan otteeseen toimialan tuotekeskeisen liiketoimintalogiikan ja kulttuurin vaikutuksista asiakkaisiin. Kyse ei siis ole siitä, ettei toimialalla olisi jo aiemmin koettu muutoksia, mutta tällä hetkellä tilanne on toimijoille monella tavoin erilainen. Ympärillä koettua muutosta ei voi helposti selittää vain yhdellä yksittäisellä tekijällä, mutta useimmiten muutos tiivistyy yhden monitulkintaisen kattokäsitteen – digitalisaation – alle. McKinseyn Karel Dörner ja David Edelman huomauttavat artikkelissaan, “What ‘digital’ really means?“, digitalisaation merkitsevän eri ihmisille hyvin erilaisia asioita. Moni korostaa digitalisaation teknologiakeskeisyyttä.…
The Evolution of Digital Wealth Management: Robo-Advisory, Digital Advisors, and Financial Planning
I just recently completed a short overview of the evolution of digital wealth management space since late 2010 to circa late 2017. In this timeline, I focus almost solely on the emergence and development of robo-advisors and various other forms of automated wealth management. I have tried to cover startups, multiple actions of incumbents and I have also collected AUM figures for some players I think are interesting to follow through in upcoming years. This timeline is based on publicly available information, and as I didn’t plan well ahead, it ended up to be a bit messy and unstructured. In the future, I plan to continue the work by focusing on various geographical differences, robo-capabilities, funding, etc. in the digital wealth management space. FinTechnews Switzerland just published a very nice story about the development of robo-advisory, and they were kind to include my “messygraphic” as part of their story. This was actually just…
Chatbots for wealth management, trade execution, and portfolio management? Yes, please!
Chatbots are gaining some momentum in the financial services industry in Finland. OP Financial Group has been at the forefront of launching a relatively large amount of experiments. Other Finnish banks and financial institutions have been rather passive but at the moment OP Financial Group is setting the bar quite high. Kotipizza’s collaboration with OP Financial Group is an example of a transactional chatbot for ordering food (simply order through Facebook Messenger and pay with Pivo app), last year OP’s Pivo Penni (a chatbot for students) turned out to be a short-lived test, and in addition OP launched an invite-only financial management chatbot Pivo Alfred (spending analysis) last December. Unfortunately, there has been no further news about S-Bank’s collaborative chatbot project since last year. In the US, many banks and other financial institutions have already deployed chatbots. As many commentators have already pointed out previously, there are various forms of chatbots ranging from customer service,…