The WEALTHTECH Book

1Introduction

Executive Summary

WealthTech can be narrowly defined as the technology/software used to help investors make better decisions when it comes to where they should put their money. In this book we define WealthTech much more widely as the impact that technology has on the global investment and wealth management industry, including private banking and asset management. WealthTech includes known business-to-consumer (B2C) models such as crowd-funding, alternative lending and robo-advisory.¹ However, it also includes business-to-business (B2B) enterprise innovation and technologies in the areas of blockchain, artificial intelligence and big data analytics, which empower asset managers to achieve better returns at lower costs for the benefit of their customers. This part will provide you with an introduction into the future of this sector, which controls global assets of more than US$70 trillion.²

As much of the financial industry from the retail sector has started to transform, the asset management sector is now experiencing the changing tides of technology too. But this type of disruption is different from what we have seen in the past, as it is now more about FinTech partnerships and how to counter threats from new business models and tech giants. Alibaba’s four-year-old Yu’e Bao, for example, now has more than US$200 billion of assets under management and thus ...