New Year New Tech New Research
In your new year resolutions, did you pledge to understand more the technology that scares you? Or at least the one that some people (aka analysts like me) claim will replace you? If the answer is "No" and you are working in the field of Investment Research, whether producing, consuming or distributing it, then you may want to read our latest report Start Coding Investment Research: How to Implement MiFID II with Robots and AI.
I get paid to write research on fintech so theoretically I am not the tech scared type though I am the first one to control screen time at home. I know we have more and more competition from free research you can all find at your fingertips on the internet, and from cheaper research that leverages outsourced resources crunching a lot of data, but so far we are keeping up probably because our clients think we provide insight that those competitors do not provide yet. I know however that we have competitors that have technological platforms that distribute their technology in a more user-friendly way with podcasts and fancy databases, that write their research in a more automated way and that you can consume easily because you pull the information with selective search technology that knows what you want and how much you can pay for it.
So before the holiday season, to make sure we were all going to start this new year with the right information in hand, I did look into what artificial intelligence and robotic process automation tools will be doing to research; not exactly my kind of markets fintech research, but more specifically to Investment Research, those written recommendations about equity or bonds or macroeconomic environments to help the buy side make investments. The result is very honestly scary and exciting at the same time.
These new technologies are maturing at a time of big regulatory change in Europe, MiFID2 is finally kicking in and that means the unbundling of investment research cost from the execution costs the brokers and banks charge their buy side clients. Some buy side will keep using them and be happy to pay that fee, some clearly will start looking at other solutions that will have to propose a different business model provided by banks or by new market players, based on technology. In our recent report we do look exactly at that: new business models and live case studies that have already been implemented in investment research production, distribution and consumption. Enjoy.