Actual Intelligence's Managing Director Ben Stokes took part in a series of lively workshops at the 2016 International Fund Forum in Berlin. The subject was the imaginary future role of the Asset Manager. The topics covered centered around the changing face of the Asset Management Industry as a result of the impact of disruptive technology. Work groups were asked to give their thoughts and set out their conclusions to the following questions:
1. Asset Managers and robots competing with each other in a world where some clients would choose to deal with humans, and some with robots.
2. Asset Managers who have become experts in artificial intelligence spend their time designing algorithms and fine-tuning them. Those algorithms deal with the end user.
3. Asset Managers as coaches, understanding the client’s desires and turning them into investment strategies, and handing those to machines to execute.
Although consensus was sometimes hard to reach, all participants agreed huge transformational change resulting from digital disruption would completely change the face of the Asset Management Industry in the near term.
© 2016 Alex Gray, International Fund Forum.