How to Give “Sleep-Tight” Robo-Advice
By Paul Resnik
Director Marketing, PanPlus and Co-Founder, FinaMetrica
No investor should ever be surprised by the ups and downs of their portfolio. After paying for financial advice, investors are entitled to “sleep tight”. They should never lie awake worrying about changes in the value of their investments.
Regrettably, sleepless nights will be the norm for many investors. Their mistake? They trusted a robo-advisor – an automated advice process that made an investment recommendation. Unfortunately, many of these automated advisors are badly built and recommend investments that are not suitable for the customer.
So, what is wrong with most robo brains? And why do they recommend unsuitable investments? A key problem is that many robos are simply replicating the poor examples set for them by the human advice process!
The investment industry happily “talks the talk” about making recommendations that are suitable for their customers when it helps win clients while avoiding regulatory intent, but it has a very poor record when it comes to “walking the walk” down the path of investment suitability – the matching of investment products to investors, using tools including risk profiling.
Today, it is the investor’s unrevealed problem. However, after the next major market correction, this will spread the pain. First, it will be the robo’s problem. Soon afterwards, it will become the problem of the sales and marketing departments of the robo, followed ...
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