KUALA LUMPUR: Investment managers in the country are exploring or looking to incorporate innovations in their daily operations as it provides a better platform and the ability to compete within the market space.
While noting that such technologies will automate tasks to improve efficiency and accuracy, Kenanga Investors Bhd (KIB) chief executive officer Ismitz Matthew De Alwis said it can also help investment managers to respond in a more relevant and proactive manner to face black swan events.
"Innovation in our age has also revolutionised the way we do our business, especially in the financial industry. We have no choice but to keep abreast of changes so that we don’t get left behind,” he responded to NST Business via an email reply recently.
Ismitz said technology in general has made the financial industry progress in terms of efficiency, convenience, and security among other aspects.
The Kenanga Global Multi Asset Fund (KGMAF), first-of-its-kind in Malaysia, uses proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to monitor markets 24-hour, identifying patterns in global market prices and volumes.
"As opposed to other AI techniques, KGMAF is looking for any general patterns, and is not making assumptions that markets mean revert or follow trends.
“This is only possible due to recent advancements in AI that allow systems to more efficiently process very large data sets and make better probabilistic forecasts,” he said.
KGMAF is a fully systematic programme that allows decisions by the system without human intervention with constant hands-on experts to monitor the system behaviour in the event that it behaves unexpectedly.
Ismitz pointed out that KGMAF’s system is able to scan 24 hours daily on large global market data sets, and take advantage of the best risk adjusted opportunities.
“What KGMAF is trying to do is pick up on intraday price movements, which allows it to perform irrespective of the movement of the underlying markets," he said.
While all investments have risk and can go up and down including KGMAF, Ismitz believed KGMAF has significantly lower risk due to its strategy that has performed well when volatility increases.
He also cited KGMAF’s ability to find high risk-reward opportunities in large data sets, and execute the best opportunities in real time.
KIB’s immediate plans for the future revolve around the improvement of client experience through the adoption of financial technology with the commitment of channelling resources and research and development (R&D) into new products.
"We strive to be able to cater to evolving customer expectations and increased trust and transparency with our clients. We look forward to providing clients with a seamless product application process and easy online portfolio management of their investments,” he added.