Most wealthtech platforms are return centric. This leads to an investment push using greed as a hook thereby setting up an incorrect foundation of expectations. Unfortunately, in investing, technology is being used to commoditize investing and enabling sales but not to make investing journeys and outcomes better.
Today, top performing funds and their past performance can be easily accessed by almost everyone through a simple google search. Why is it then that very few people can remain invested long enough to create wealth?
Information overload has made investing easier but wealth creation almost impossible. This information clutter has massively amplified fear and greed, the two most destructive forces in the investing world. Information is no longer a premium, in fact it’s turned destructive!
A great technology platform democratises wealth creation and long-term investing by setting a strong foundation built on rational expectations, hyper customization, collaboration and joint decision-making built into the technology platform.
Technology needs to play a pivotal role in enabling people, investors as well as investing experts, to enhance their abilities with an end objective to achieve investing perseverance. This ability to be resilient, despite market volatility, and remain invested for the long term can happen only if technology can empower a five step process to deliver value comprehensively to the investor as well as the investing experts.
People
Technology platforms should bring investment experts and investors together, encourage customisation, collaboration, co-ownership of goals, joint decision making while following a strong conversation led investment process. The platform is an enabler for the investment manager to customise and have meaningful conversations.
Technology is a driver to add value and to follow critical processes to ensure that client interest is protected at all times. Technology should make investing experts better at managing investments and relationships, thus bringing out the best in people through technology! Managing investing behaviour is critical to staying invested. We can be our own enemy when it comes to investing.
Personalisation
From client discovery session, understanding cash flows, financial ratios, investing behaviour and attitude towards risk and reward. Technology should be an enabler of personalisation and customisation, an investment that might be a boon for one individual can be a bane for the next. This ability of technology to assist hyper customisation is the biggest contribution to investing success and a fantastic investing experience.
Purpose
The tech platform should help identifying important financial goals, prioritising them, aligning investment solutions, collaborative engagement to build understanding around inflation, time value, compounding, and diversification. Investing with purpose is an extremely powerful tool to disengage from excessive information clutter which can make managing market volatility tough.
Process
Building perseverance through regular conversation, understanding the relationship between volatility and risk/reward, focusing on goals rather than returns, setting unique individual performance benchmarks, enabling scenario analysis to understand ‘what ifs’, and building intelligence around investing discipline. A great wealthtech platform would ensure that there is an iron cast process around investing best practices. Technology can enable and enforce this process so that there is uniformity in the investing journey, irrespective of the investment amounts of the investor.
Products
Aligning the right products to goals and risk profile, deploying risk reducing investment tools like SIP’s, STP’s tools, step up investing, time-led realignment to goals, reviewing life and financial events at recurring intervals. Technology plays a major part not only in transactional convenience and reporting but also as a solution provider for the right investing practices.
Investing resilience comes from understanding risk, managing behaviour and investing with purpose, followed by the right products. All this combined gives the investor the ability to stay invested. Wealth creation can only happen if investment resilience is achieved!
Harsh Gahlaut is the CEO, FinEdge
