The transfer of wealth
All businesses run into the generational wall eventually. The success of FinTech is no exception, because wealth managers and advisors will need to take a look at their technology to be sure that it is fulfilling the needs of the generation of millennials:
“The mobile experience will be important and very valuable in the future. But it depends on the types of the individuals. Even now, there are plenty of self-directed folks who will trade on their own and want the details, then there are other people who hire a wealth advisor so that they don’t have to worry about it. So those types of people may not care about a mobile experience, because they are already paying someone to worry about that for them.”
In this way the industry is very fragmented, with many different variations and strategies available to firms. Bryson is focused on his own niche of electronic trading and rebalancing, and this may be the key to the company’s success in the future:
“Flexibility is very important. I know for us, now and for the future, being able to address a wide variety of different clients and different needs is critical. The industry is so fragmented that the more products you have as a company, the harder it is to solve the evolving industry challenges and needs.”
Robots taking over?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is an exciting new field that is moving at lightning pace. AI tech plays a big role in finance in the form of robo-advisors and chatbots. Bryson stresses that it may be possible to fully replace humans for things like modeling, investments, and trading. However, a robot (or AI) will likely never be able to reassure clients in the same way that a person can. This goes beyond the level of crunching numbers and making pretty charts to psychological and behavioral aspects of human nature. That is why hybridization is a trend that Bryson firmly believes in, where robo-advisors are now adding a human element (for example, Betterment and Vanguard):
“It will be a long time before humans are completely eliminated from the process, there is that reassurance and comfort that people will expect from a human experience.”
Finding people with the right skillset
The 20 years that Bryson has spent in finance have given him insights into how valuable it is to educate tech employees on investment and industry. It is difficult to find people who have both finance and tech experience, which is why Bryson developed his own set of training materials for his team:
“We’ve been typically hiring people with more of an engineering or technical background and [then providing] training around the investment knowledge, it takes more time to get people up to speed that way but it benefits clients if they can talk directly to a support person with in depth knowledge. I think there’s not as many people with both finance and technology experience to hire from.”
Interviewed by Vasyl Soloshchuk, CEO and co-owner at INSART, FinTech & Java engineering company. Vasyl is also the author of WealthTech Club, which conducts research into Fortune and Startup Robo-advisor and Wealth Management companies in terms of the technology ecosystem.