Robots take up role in equity investment

A robot capable of offering investment advice interacts with Teng Fang,the co-founder of InnoTREE, in Beijing, April 12, 2016.[Provided to China Daily]

It was difficult to imagine just 10 years ago how a robot could help you select projects instead of financial advisers when managing money, but nowadays artificial intelligence technology is being increasingly used in investment and wealth management services.

Internet-based equity financing and investment service provider InnoTREE Co Ltd on Tuesday launched a service using robots to offer equity investment advice to investors.

Ma Chao, founder of InnoTREE, said: "The robot could first establish a database, which covers the investment and financing information of more than 130,000 startups, and then track and analyze the daily operation situation of these startups or their projects."

Ma said the robot will analyze the business model of these projects, categorize and evaluate them, and finally select the startups that are worth making investments in through its modeling and calculation.

"The workload of a robot each minute is equivalent to the workload of an experienced analyst working for 40 hours. Its cognition level is same as an investment manager with three to four years of investment experience," said Teng Fang, co-founder of the company.

It is the first time that robots are being applied in the equity investment market.

Yi Jigang, president of Orient Jiyi Investment, a Beijing-based private equity firm, told China Daily that the amount of equity investment is very small, but has huge development potential.

"AI technology will make the equity market more effective and efficient," Yi said.

"AI technology won't shock the investment industry but promote it. People could make use of the technological achievements to devote more time and energy do other higher-level business, and improve working efficiency and value by virtue of advanced machine tools," Yi added.

Another Beijing-based internet finance company, Jimu.com, said earlier this month it was going to launch a service using robots to offer wealth management advice to clients.

It is possible that the machines will be able to calculate investment risk, predict investment yield and offer customized financial advice through deep learning and analyzing huge amounts of data, said Dong Jun, the company's chief executive officer.

Yang Fan, a researcher at Beijing-based internet consultancy Analysys International, told China Daily that "AI technology could only play an auxiliary role in the equity investment market as a huge pool of fake information exists in the market and the machine couldn't identify its authenticity."

Yang said that AI technology will not fully replace humans, but may help humans by doing low-efficiency and trivial jobs, which could save time and energy for humans to do more creative work, adding some high-risk equity investment should still be done by humans.