NZ Funds: No robo yet

The fund manager said it was now creating 71 plans a month and its myWealth technology is being used by 11,000 clients with more than $800 million in assets.

“Six years ago we designed New Zealand’s first robo adviser. However, we found that,  as is often the case, technology and innovation had outpaced the law. The regulation in  New Zealand at that time did not contemplate the provision of electronic advice so we  could not launch it, so we pivoted and launched myWealth as freeware instead,” said Damon Murfitt, chief technology officer.

“The big breakthrough for us occurred this year when we added automatic plan writing  capability to our WealthPlan software for financial advisers. WealthPlan enables clients,  in conjunction with their financial adviser, to automatically produce a full financial plan with only the click of a button.”

The plan “fully scripts” a writeup of who the client is: age, stage, risk profile, investment approach, current and future investment decisions and automatically models the effect of drawings in retirement without the adviser having to type anything.