Ant Financial, Vanguard target 900 million users with robo-adviser
- The two companies’ robo-adviser will recommend a portfolio selected from 6,000 mutual funds
- Users can access the service through payments app Alipay and Ant Fortune, a wealth management platform
The joint venture between The Vanguard Group and Ant Financial Services is rolling out a new robo-adviser to target the Chinese fintech giant’s 900 million users, a first step in winning a slice of the nation’s fast-growing asset management business.
Their venture started offering an automated service called Bang Ni Tou, which translates as “Help You Invest”, to capture people with at least 800 yuan (US$113) to place in mutual funds, the companies said on Thursday.
“What we do is help users select an entire football team, instead of just one player,” Peter Zhang, chief executive of Vanguard Investment Advisers (Shanghai) Investment Consultancy Co, said in an interview. “We help our users by selecting a portfolio of investments that generate long-term returns.”
While the coronavirus outbreak has rocked the Chinese economy, the nation is proceeding apace with the further opening of its financial industry this month. Foreign asset managers are now rushing in to establish a foothold in a retail funds market that could grow to US$3.4 trillion by 2023.
Ant Financial, controlled by Alibaba Group Holding founder Jack Ma, is a US$150 billion juggernaut that operates everything from payments to money market funds and credit scoring. Alibaba is the parent company of the South China Morning Post.
The new joint venture – in which Ant Financial holds a 51 per cent stake and US investment adviser Vanguard 49 per cent – has been approved by the China Securities Regulatory Commission.