8月16日，《南华早报》发布上海交通大学上海高级金融学院客聘教授胡捷的采访报道，他表示，智能投顾让银行节约成本，并且更容易接触精通技术的客户，还可以通过计算机程序提供财务建议。尽管该行业仍处于起步阶段，但它有着巨大的潜力，因为fintech和移动银行是未来的机遇所在，它能提高效率，更好地迎合不断变化的消费者需求。

Chinese banks leverage AI technology to reach young, tech-savvy investors

Four mainland lenders, China Merchants Bank, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, Industrial Bank and Ping An Bank, have introduced robo-advisers as part of their online wealth management platforms to reduce the need for investors to visit local branches for face to face advice. All four are second-tier lenders that are less influential than the bigger state-owned banks.

“Banks can save cost and make it easier to reach tech-savvy clients with robo-advisers, or financial advice offered by computer programmes,” said Hu Jie, an affiliated professor at the Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. “The sector, though still in its infancy, has great potential as fintech and mobile banking are where the future opportunities lie with improved efficiency and better catering to evolving consumer needs.”

What’s your risk appetite? Your robo-adviser has the answer

The emerging sector currently has no dominant players so banks can compete head-to-head with other asset managers as well as technology giants, he said.

For retail investors, the investment threshold of the new services is much lower than most traditional banking assets management products.

Robo-advisers are a smart, easy to use, low threshold and low cost way to give mass investors access to professional wealth management services, said Ping An Bank in reply to questions from the South China Morning Post. The bank also noted it will expand coverage of the services to more products in addition to the current mutual funds portfolio.

China Merchants Bank, which requires a minimum investment of 20,000 yuan, has seen assets under management for the AI-based service top 5 billion yuan since its launch in December 2016.

“It’s very unlikely robo-advisers will fully replace all human advisers in the long term,” said Li Zichuan, an analyst at consultancy Analysys, adding that human and robotic advisers will co-exist and be complementary to each other.

China’s total robo-adviser market is expected to top 5.22 trillion yuan by 2020, he estimated.

Globally, the robo-adviser segment is expected to skyrocket to US$6.5 trillion by 2025, up from US$100 billion in 2016, according to McKinsey, which noted that Chinese banks need to speed up their investment in the segment.