Is there any future "smart investment advisory"?

"China Economic Weekly" reporter Xie Wei | Beijing report

"The intelligent investment adviser that was once held so high now is gone." Investor Ms. Li lamented at the reporter of "China Economic Weekly".

On June 27, Ms. Li received a text message from China Merchants Bank. SMS states that starting from July 1, the Capricorn Investment of the Bank will no longer provide services such as purchase, warehouse adjustment, performance display, investment companionship, etc., and the redemption transactions will not be affected.

Prior to this, many banks, including Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Construction Bank, and Minsheng Bank, have announced the adjustment of intelligent investment advisory business. Many banks announced that they will stop their intelligent investment advisory business at the end of this month or early next month.

This means that the intelligent investment advisory business, which was once popular, was regarded as the "fruit" of fintech innovation. What is the reason behind this?

How to "Zhitou"?

As the "fruit" of financial technology innovation in the past few years, intelligent investment advisors can be described as an important manifestation of AI technology in the application of the financial field.

Except for the "Capricorn Intelligence Investment" of China Merchants Bank, many banks have launched intelligent investment advisory products, such as the ICBC's intelligent investment advisory system "AI investment", the "Agricultural Bank Intelligent Investment" of Agricultural Bank of China, and the "Dragon" of the Construction Bank "Zhitou", as well as "Ping An Zhitou" of Ping An Bank.

Ms. Li is an old customer for China Merchants Bank's "Capricorn Investment" service. In 2017, she came into contact with the introduction of "Capricorn Zhitu" related products and invested tens of thousands of yuan to buy.

According to the relevant information of China Merchants Bank, "Capricorn Smart Investment" is a "tool" that serves the fluctuation market. It is not a wealth management product that protects the capital and keeps income. Risk strategy "can build a fund portfolio according to the value tolerance and return of the investor's acceptable risk tolerance and return, so as to complete the tools of the user's investment plan.

It is reported that "Capricorn Zhitou" divides the risk level of users into 10 levels, and the product investment period is divided into 3 types, with a total of 30 combinations. The starting point of the "Capricorn Zhitou" group is RMB 20,000, starting from 5,000 yuan, without any additional costs. The expenses for the purchase and redemption shall be determined by the underlying fund costs.

"It is to scatter the money into a very many fund combinations. Anyway, it will prompt the automatic positioning after a while. One -click adjustment, it will buy some funds automatically and then buy some." Ms. Li said.

Taking the Capricorn No. 17 product purchased by Ms. Li in 2019 as an example, her combined income was 190.904 million yuan, and the portfolio yield reached 27.28%. According to the monthly report of "Capricorn Zhitou" in March 2022, the cumulative income of the combination in the past three years was 20.78%, and the annualized yield was 6.5%.

"It's a pity that it's a pity now. After all, if you buy a fund yourself, the yield may be negative ..." Ms. Li said with a smile.

However, not all smart investment counseling products perform well. There are also other investors that the benefits of the intelligent investment advisory products they hold are losing losses and "not imagined." In terms of income, whether the intelligent investment advisor can win the traditional manual investment advisor, you still have to get a question mark.

In fact, as early as the end of last year, many banks, including Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Construction Bank, and Minsheng Bank, announced the adjustment of intelligent investment advisory business, suspended intelligent investment advisory purchase functions, and no longer added scale. Many banks announced this time that the relevant services will be stopped, and the stock portfolio held by users will be split into single funds and financial management.

Regarding the reasons for many banks to adjust its intelligent investment advisory business, a number of banks mentioned in the announcement, mainly due to "regulatory requirements".

"Capricorn Zhitou" product interface

Fund Investment Counseling Welcome to Qiangqiang

The so -called "regulatory requirements" are directly related to the "Notice on Regulating Fund Investment Proposal" (hereinafter referred to as the "Notice") issued by the Securities Regulatory Department in November last year.

The "Notice" states that "some institutions confuse fund investment consulting business and fund sales business with fund investment recommendations."

The "Notice" states that the provision of fund investment portfolio strategy proposal activities as fund investment consulting business should abide by the Fund Law, "Notice on the Pilot Business Pilot Business of Investment Consultants of Securities Investment Fund", and the management of fund investment consulting business qualification management and behavior Relevant requirements such as specifications.

The "Notice" clearly states that the fund sales business provides fund investment recommendation activities, which should follow the basic legal relationship between the fund sales business and designate the six major bottom lines.

In terms of regulating rectification arrangements, the "Notice" requires that fund sales institutions that do not have the qualifications of fund investment consulting business shall rectify the fund sales business that provides the fund investment portfolio strategy to provide the fund's investment portfolio strategy before June 30, 2022.

The standard definition of the fund investment consulting business and the clear regulatory line have become important reasons for many institutions to temporarily remove the fund portfolio products.

This is just a microcosm of the fund investment advisory industry ushered in "strong supervision". In recent years, the public fund industry has developed rapidly. Data show that at present, the size of public funds has reached 25.52 trillion yuan, and the number of public funds in the market has reached 9,761. "How to buy" and "when to buy" has become a problem in front of many investors.

In 2019, the fund investment consulting business pilot kicked off. Since then, the regulatory authorities have successively introduced a series of specification documents for the field of fund investment.

Although intelligent investment advisory is different from traditional fund investment advisors in business models, it is obviously the object of supervision. In fact, as early as 2018, the "Guiding Opinions on Regulating the Asset Management Business of Financial Institutions" has regulated the intelligent investment advisory business alone.

The relevant person in charge of the People's Bank of China pointed out in the questioning reporter that the use of artificial intelligence technology to carry out investment consultants and asset management services. Because the service objects are mostly long -tail customers, the risk tolerance is low. Not in place, it is easy to cause instability. Moreover, algorithm homogeneity may cause high -frequency transactions in the cycle and exacerbate market fluctuations. The "black box attributes" of the algorithm may also make it a tool for avoiding supervision. The risks such as technical limitations and network security cannot be ignored.

"Fund investment advisory is actually an investment recommendation, that is, according to investors' data, user portraits are made to investors, and fund products are recommended for investors." Researchers Pan and Lin's analysis of the reporter of China Economic Weekly pointed out that this is consistent with the appropriate review of investors who currently pay attention to regulatory regulations, so traditional investment advisors are not much problems. Intelligent investment advisory is often active decision. Acting customers make direct investment and make decisions through AI, which has certain uncertainty.

Panhe Lin believes that intelligent investment advisory products are that customers entrust investment to AI for investment, which is not the same as that of traditional investment advisors to recommend investment products based on user risks.

From the perspective of Pan and Lin, the starting point of supervision is to make consumer investment more transparent. "Intelligent investment advisors are often technical black boxes. Investors do not know the operating mechanism of intelligent investment advisors. Most investors do not understand the adjustment parameters of artificial intelligence, so the product has opaque and risks." Pan and Lin Say.

Dong Ximiao, chief researcher at Zhailian Financial and part -time researcher at the Financial Research Institute of Fudan University, also told reporters that in the past, when the fund was hot, there were also many Internet institutions and third -party platforms under the banner of intelligent investment advisory and intelligent management. The sales of fund products have not obtained the corresponding license. It not only affects the normal development order of the industry, but even may even have misleading and benefit transmission of investors' interests.

It is necessary to further strengthen the "investor appropriateness"

However, in addition to the challenges brought by "strong supervision", the future of intelligent investment advisors is also facing the test of technology, ethics, and law.

"Smart investment advisors still have the future. To put it plainly, we still need to increase the success rate of intelligent investment advisors." Pan and Lin told the reporter of "China Economic Weekly", "It can be implemented by fund strategy. For example, many funds are quantitative investment funds It also uses professional intelligent investment advisory to predict short -term markets. Of course, some use artificial intelligence to accurately analyze the enterprise and understand the real information from the data. These are all tried, but only in terms of alternative investors' decision -making. Intelligent investment advisory is not suitable now. "

The conflict of interest in intelligent investment advisors is also worthy of attention.

"Because financial consumers do not need to make decisions in their own decisions, the corresponding investment of intelligent investment advisors has certain operating elasticity. Some intelligent investment advisors will guide the target product, not based on the interests of financial consumers." express.

Dong Ximiao also bluntly stated that as an investment proposal, the development of intelligent investment advisory business should also consider the appropriateness management of investors. However, for the appropriateness of investors, the current intelligent investment advisory business still has questions in terms of whether it can accurately reflect the risk preferences and risk tolerance of investors.

"Maybe the establishment of the investor threshold is relatively complicated. Many 'Investment Xiaobai' hopes to use smart investment advisory to realize 'fool -style' financial management because he does not know how to choose. The service target needs to have a certain risk tolerance and a certain investment experience. "Dong Ximiao said that it also needs to comprehensively through investor risk rating and manual review, etc., to determine the level of risk preferences and levels of risk to afford investor, and then provide it after comprehensive evaluation. Corresponding service.

(This article published in "China Economic Weekly", No. 13, 2022)

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