'Robo-advisers' making a play for jobs in the Canadian financial sector
AI-powered platform already managing US$0.9 billion to be made available to the public in two months' time
Walk in to any major grocery store in British Columbia, Canada and shoppers will no doubt find an unmanned terminal subbing in for a cashier, allowing customers to scan their own groceries before paying their bill.
So it’s little wonder a June report from Toronto's Ryerson University’s Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship (BIIE) cautions service-oriented workers like cashiers and retail salespeople are at a 92 per cent to 97 per cent risk of being affected by advances in automation and artificial intelligence (AI) within 20 years.
Davyde Wachell, CEO of Vancouver’s Responsive Capital Management, even envisions artificial intelligence going so far as to shake up the job market in the financial sector.
“Wealth management businesses that don’t use AI and don’t use machine learning are going to get left in the dust,” he said.
Already, robo-advisers are using automated tools to manage portfolios – a system known as passive portfolio management that relies on price averages to match market returns.
Wachell, who studied AI and machine learning at Stanford University in the early 2000s “before it became a craze,” says it’s only natural for AI to make a play for the robo-adviser market.