What is new is often scary, especially when it comes to your finances. ‘Robo advice’ seems to be the topic of the moment, but what does it mean, is a robot managing your money?
Investing in just four steps
At MoneyFarm we prefer the friendlier phrase ‘digital wealth management’, we are using technology to make your investment journey more simple and more transparent. If you were hoping to come face-to-face with C3PO we hate to disappoint, but MoneyFarm is actually a team of intelligent people, using technology, to make investments all about the customer.
What does that mean for you and your money? It means more control, a better understanding of the investment, all packaged in a simple way that you can access whenever and wherever you want. That sounds interesting but where does the ‘robo’ come from? That is all about the use of technology to get you to that end point.
To manage your investments on the move download our app from the AppStore
Step one – sign up
To start with we ask you for a few personal details. This is all about knowing who you are, we need to make sure you are John Smith the Doctor rather than John Smith the fraudster.
Step two – fill in our questionnaire
We then ask you a few questions on your understanding of financial instruments, your attitude to risk and a few more details about your circumstances. All providers will ask you these sorts of questions, we take those questions online which makes it faster. We have algorithms sat behind our survey based on tens of thousands of answers, in moments we can analyse all of your answers and match you to the profile best suited to you.
Step three – select your investment
That profile will correspond to an investment portfolio; you will be matched to one of six portfolios. These portfolios are designed with the customer in mind, if the market is really volatile and we have a customer who will not like to see the value of their investment go up and down, they will have a portfolio made up of things like cash and short term government bonds which tend to be more stable than something like equity.
Step four – start your investment journey
Once you have that portfolio all you need us to do is transfer the money and you are ready to go. We offer discretionary wealth management so by setting up a portfolio with us you give us the permission to manage your money for you.
Watch this video to understand how we work
No information overload
Sat behind your money is an investment or asset allocation team with a wealth of expertise; we have experts in equities, currency, fixed income etc. The team constantly monitor the markets; they look at all of the big announcements and how these impact each of our portfolios and when necessary they will buy and sell on your behalf to ensure your portfolio is optimised for current market conditions. They use some incredibly sophisticated technology to help them do it, but ultimately those decisions are made by people.
When you become a MoneyFarm customer you get access to an incredibly sophisticated dashboard which can be accessed online, through a mobile app, in your office or on the train. Within that dashboard you can see how the value of your investment has changed over time, how the asset classes are performing and how the individual exchange traded funds are performing.
And if this is not quite clear enough we have a team of investment consultants on hand to answer all of your questions or concerns.
Moving online
What we have done is taken the relationship you would have with a traditional offline provider or advisor and put this online. It is all about making the process more efficient and more transparent. We are saving you time and money. Until now millions of people have been unable to access any sort of financial advice, the ‘robo advisors’ mean you can have an expert in your pocket, making that investment journey a little simpler.
