AI & ROBO-ADVISORY
IBM AI powered autonomous lab
A Symbiotic Relationship Anthony Butler Chief Technology Officer, IBM Middle East and Africa provides a clear assessment of how Robo Advisory could bring more investors into the market, even benefiting human investment professionals and creating opportunities benefiting all players
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t the beginning of 2022, several new Robo Advisory platforms were launched in GCC, can we expect to see many more coming online in the near future? The first robo-advisors appeared in 2010 and the market has grown rapidly in
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recent years. We are seeing new products enter the market that are increasingly sophisticated or targeting different segments of the market. For example, robo-advisors targeting people interested in Islamic finance or ESG-focused investing are an example of how these platforms will segment the market; we
Banking and Finance news in the MEA market
will also see increasingly sophisticated use of artificial intelligence and machine learning as both these technologies and their applications to the financial world continue to evolve. The GCC will not be an exception and I believe that, in particular, the demographics of the Gulf, with its youthful digitally-native population, make it well suited to the adoption of robo advisory technologies.
What is your view of digital financial advisory and the role it plays in managing portfolios? In general, digital financial advisory can play multiple roles. Firstly, they can democratise access to financial advice for people who might otherwise not have access to a financial advisor or be able to afford their services. Someone who wants to invest passively today could simply install an app, set some broad investing objectives (such as growth vs income), some risk parameters, and then let the application manage. They don’t need to be able to read a balance sheet or perform technical analysis, yet they are able to invest in a way that is better informed than would be possible normally.