I chat with Ross Milward from Quantifeed about moving beyond product sales towards a future where technology empowers investors.

Today’s investors need more than a list of products—they need guidance. By integrating software solutions, the wealth management industry can align itself with the long-term goals of clients, build better portfolios and embrace a more holistic approach.

TRIVIA: Ross and I were colleagues at Deutsche Bank for a while, although in different locations. As a salesperson, I witnessed the quantitative revolution in equity derivatives that Ross and his team engineered. This allowed greater access to quantitative tools and products within Deutsche Bank, between sales traders and structurers. This movement is now extending across vendors, advisors and end-clients.

HIGHLIGHTS

On wealth management:

If wealth management can be more accessible, you used the word democratize, that would be wonderful. There’s obviously a lot of stress in the global system around ageing populations, the burden that’s putting on pension funds, the earlier people can invest for the longer term the better. Bringing these tools into the hands of the end-customer, into the hands of the advisor, is the vision for us.

That democratization, for all of us, would be wonderful and for an advisor to sit with me, and have a solution, that I then work towards with that person over months and years, rather than being sold a product and then three months later thinking, what the hell did I buy that for? I can’t remember what that product was. That change of conversation is still really an opportunity for the industry.

The partnership model:

Nobody in this ecosystem can do everything. So I do think that partnership model, where we can work with the experts on the data, or the valuation of structured products, et cetera, fits really nicely for us. And when we work with financial institutions, there will often be one or two of these partnerships around data and product.

The AI opportunity for usability:

There’s a lot of opportunity for the AI tooling to provide information and bubble up information in a different form of interface than the current user interfaces that a lot of these platforms have. The combination of AI leveraging the underlying algorithms and the data can enable better usability. An advisor logging in at the start of a day, instead of them navigating and looking at what to do, you can be sweeping with agents saying: Well look, there’s been a movement in a set of customers positions or there’s been a change in a particular fund price, or we’ve just had the strategic asset allocation from our CIO group has just been imported and it’s impacting a set of clients.

LINKS

Quantifeed’s website: https://www.quantifeed.com/

Ross Milward on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ross-milward-36770b/

George Aliferis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-aliferis-60078312/

Investology on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@investology_podcast

This episode was produced by Orama - a video and podcast studio for B2B brands: https://orama.tv/

ABOUT QUANTIFEED

Combining software engineering and quantitative finance, Quantifeed helps transform financial institutions into providers of wealthcare, a customer-centric service focused on meeting everyone's wealth management needs. Quantifeed’s solutions empower CIOs, customers, advisors, and portfolio managers. Quantifeed’s suite of capabilities and services can be assembled and configured to create compelling digital advice propositions.

ABOUT THE INVESTOLOGY PODCAST

A podcast that helps you think about critical topics and principles of investment management. Available on all podcast platforms https://pod.link/1511595070 or YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@investology_podcast

ABOUT GEORGE ALIFERIS

George is driven by a mission to explore innovative ways to deliver better outcomes for investors. His career began in financial markets sales at institutions such as Natixis, Deutsche Bank, and Invesco (Source), where he specialised in alternative investments, derivatives, and ETFs.

George is the founder of Orama, a financial services content agency. He is a CAIA Charterholder and holds a master’s degree from HEC Paris.

To be featured on the podcast, you can contact george@orama.tv

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Fixing Wealth Management with Quant & Software

02:24 Early Career and Experience at Deutsche Bank

04:21 Understanding the Role of Quants and Developers

05:27 Scaling and Architecture in Financial Systems

06:47 Evolution of Trading Platforms

08:31 Founding of Quantifeed

11:06 Client Segments and Services

13:18 Implementation and Integration of Quantifeed Solutions

26:08 Impact of AI and Machine Learning

33:51 The Advice System is Broken (Alokik Advani FISV)

36:51 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

My Investing & Investment Management channels

Investorama - Separating Investment Facts from Financial Fiction (YouTube)

Investology - Re-Think Investment Management (YouTube)

Investology in Audio version

For B2B Brands, Marketers & Podcasters

Orama (my business): Accelerate sales to the financial industry with content that builds trust and drives pipeline.

Newsletter about Selling to Financial Services: on Substack

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