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Empirica presented robo advisory software at FinTech Connect Live in London

Empirica took part in the biggest FinTech Event in Europe with almost 2500 attendees from 44 countries and 145 exhibitors & partners, taking place in London this December (6th & 7th). FinTech Connect Live combined a large scale expo, with 180 experts speaking in 120 dedicated conferences focusing on different FinTech subsectors, like WealthTech, InsurTech or PayTech with strategic discussion based sessions, keynote presentations, product demos and interactive workshops.

fintech-connect-live-2016Empirica proudly presented own white label solutions like an intelligent Robo-Advisory Platform, Algorithmic Trading Engine and FinTech Software Framework as well as development services among both tech giants and brand new start ups with sophisticated niche product offerings. Anyone interested in speaking with Empirica about building the bespoke FinTech solution behind own service could meet our team at the stand. We shared experiences gained for over 6 years of developing solutions for financial institutions and FinTech companies, including robo-advisors. We ran many interesting conversations about new market trends and needs, specially in wealth management space. Our Robo-Advisory Platform received huge attention from asset managers and investment companies participating in the event.

Empirica presented also company showcase demo at the showcase theater. While presenting our experiences, CEO of Empirica illustrated the most important issues of building tailored FinTech software.

fintech-connect-live-2016-sDuring the conference there were many interesting presentations and panel discussions about future trends of robo advice and advancements in the fields of InvesTech and WealthTech and other FinTech sessions like: the future of banking, blockchain rising, opportunities and risks in the data economy in FinTech, crowdfunding & P2P lending.

Thank you to all the participants who visited us at our stand or watched our showcase demo presentation! 

Empirica Team

 

See our Robo Advisor Software:

See our Robo Advisor Software

Free version of Algorithmic Trading Platform for retail investors

We have just released beta of Empirica – Algorithmic Trading Paltform for retail investors! It’s lifetime free for development, testing and optimizing of trading algorithms.

Our development team (exactly this team who implemented the entire system) also provides full support in algorithms development as well as connectivity to brokers. If you need help just contact us.

Among many features what is unique is our exchange simulation where you can influence market conditions under which you test your algorithms. No others software offers such a realistic level of simulation.

In paid versions we offer the execution of algorithms in robust server side architecture.

Download free version of Trade Pad at www.empirica.io. We strive for your feedback!

Algorithmic Trading Software

New tendencies in Robo Advisory space

In case you haven’t yet learned about the new robo financial advisor businesses (or digital counselors ), this should be the year you do. They are fast growing and gaining ample assets.

Based on a study by Corporate Penetration, from April 2014 to July 2015, the top robo-advisors — or automated investment services as many choose to be called — went from $115 billion to $21 billion assets under management

With these new companies bringing more investors and with all the business continuing to mature, there will undoubtedly be many changes that affect the robo-advisory market. Here’s that which we are prone to find in 2016 and beyond.

Legacy Firms Go Robo
As the robo-advisor industry grows it will continue to attract the attention of financial services companies that are established. These corporations desire to offer what their clients need — money management that is easy — while at precisely the same time bringing more funds to manage. Right now they’re losing dollars to the upstart robo-advisor companies under direction. Since the amount of money under management determines how much money firms can make, they will pay attention to the reason why they are losing out on new investment dollars.

Just previously year, Fidelity Investments, Charles Schwab Corp. and The Vanguard Group have either created their own digital services unit or partnered with an existing pureplay robo business.. You’re able to get the other large companies to join the trend.

Increased Kinds of Investment Options
They work by ensuring you’ve got the right asset allocation for your targets using index funds. A number of them subsequently additionally use tax loss harvesting as ways to improve yields.

Beyond their own original assumption of money management that is digital, robo-advisors will start offering options as a means to obtain a competitive advantage in a increasingly crowded market. You could possibly end up seeing matters such as portfolios according to different analytical strategies using beta that is intelligent and technical analysis. Businesses will use these investing alternatives in an attempt to make their services more appealing to those that desire to overcome and time the market but still do not want to manage their own portfolio.

The Flip Side
One trend that will probably coincide with robo-advisors’ evolution is lousy investment options. We have to be prepared to see existing companies or upstarts begin offering robo services at extremely high fees. We will also probably see this paired with awful investment choices which have fine print that is concealed and additional high fees that’ll lock customers into contracts

It’s no different with index funds that bill more than 10% for the same thing you can get for 006%.. Such funds continue to be in business because people get demanded by salespeople that are competitive to put their money there or they do not take the time to comprehend what makes a great investment. The sort of companies that run these funds may achieve success by trumpeting a trend and preying on consumers that are uneducated.

Mergers, Acquisitions and Closings

Depending on at, it’s projected there are about 200 robo-advisor companies out there, many which don’t have a lot of assets under management. Together with the area this packed, expect to find acquisitions closes and mergers. The rate of employee turnover in the marketplace might be fast given that robo-advisors tend to have smaller borders as a result of lower fees they charge. And when it comes to survival of the fittest, it’ll probably be problematic for independent robo-advisor to gain enough traction to make it on their own..

The consolidation is already occurring — BlackRock Inc. recently purchased Future Counselor and Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance purchased upstart online money supervisor LearnVest.

More Options for Private Guidance
Robo-advisors work nicely without important life changes on the horizon for clients and for individuals who don’t need added services such as estate planning. Robos choose all the stress out of obtaining the right asset allocation and investments; they are also maintained by them without an excessive amount of cost.

Nevertheless, as investors reach stages in their life where they want more advice that is personalized to work through choices — buying a property, saving for college or getting ready to retire — they’ll want access to more than simply a computer program

That is really where the robo-advisor firms will start to incorporate human counselors to help with matters that are more complicated. This may mean an increased fee to obtain a person that is dedicated adviser, or it can mean that one is paid for by customers as guidance that is more involved is needed. The natural evolution of the market’s can lead to conventional human advisors accentuating their practice by pairing up having a while label robo-advisor to offer the automated investment services ; premium services which demand a dedicated financial advisor may still be offered when needed
Robo-advisors are here to remain, but the services will continue to evolve to generally meet the demands of younger investors over the course of their life. For when they may be needed and more investment options, this includes services that are increased. With an increase in competition, you are going to see these matters become a large part of the mixture.

The Great FinTech Trends – Robo Advisor Race

The Fantastic FinTech Robo Advisor Race

Possibly no other sub sector of the arena that was fintech has received as the robo advisors as institutional and retail interest. The company of financial planning and personal investment impacts substantial pools of capital and large investor sections. Innovation in the investment technology space is creating a race that is furious among insurance companies and startups, brokerages, wealth management businesses to serve a changing and evolving account base. .. But you will find many factors to consider as competition heats up
Who Are the Robo Advisors
By now, the robo advisors are familiar to almost all fintech watchers. Their services include automated portfolio preparation, automatic asset allocation, risk assessments that are on-line, account re reconciliation and other digital tools. Well known players comprise Theme, Wealthfront, Betterment and Folio , among others.

Generally, robo advisors allow more folks, who otherwise may not be able meet account minimums or to invest with confidence, to enter the market in a passive way. Conventional wealth management companies and financial advisers cost 1% of higher or AUM. Robo advisors fulfill a need for more economic, automated and digital preparation tools which might be preferred by younger, digital informed investors or those who want more privacy and control over their portfolio.

Nonetheless, it’s not other younger generations and merely the Millennials who favor digital investment tools. Firms have figured out this and are starting to compete with the robo advisors.
For on-line brokers, robo advising feels like a natural extension of what was already an electronic service. Stock brokers went through a substantial transformation in the late nineties during the first dot com boom and most, or even all, became online agents. More fascinating is the degree of interest in robo advisors from very traditional players such as insurance companies, asset managers and wealth management businesses. Buy, these firms are aggressively moving to assemble and associate with robo technologies

Below is an inventory of some of the announced mixes and launches within the last two years:

* Northwest Mutual acquiring Learnvest

* BlackRock acquiring Future Advisor

* Invesco obtaining Jemstep

* Vanguard launching Private Adviser Services

* Charles Schwab found Scwab Intelligent Portfolios

* Fidelity Investments launching Fidelity Go

* E*Trade launching Adaptive Portfolio

Challenges and Concerns

The decision for traditional financial institutions to compete with robo advising is, on the one hand, practically apparent, while requiring some complicated factors. Lower fees and the digital transformation changing the financial services sector has become an universal subject. The main tactical dilemma for conventional players who enter robo advising seems to function as impact to their current business
A vexing dilemma for those players with an incredibly big AUM base is the potential cannibalization of their fee revenues. If these players switch to a robo advisor model and charge lower fees for the same AUM, they will, essentially, have to attract a larger AUM base to make precisely the same fees as before, while at the same time investing in new technologies to support the automated preparation and digital toolkits. Cost reductions might need certainly to come from a reduction in headcount among their financial adviser sales force to maintain profitability in the midst of these capital outlays.
But it can be even more complicated for those players who desire to offer a hybrid vehicle service including the digital toolkits of a robo advisor while offering light touch individual counselor services. For these kinds of offerings, distinct tiered account services, with changing fee levels might be a more intelligent strategy
Offering a robo advisor service might be an opportunistic play for wealth management businesses who sit at the nexus of the inter generational wealth transfer which is taking place. .. Losing accounts through the inter generational wealth transfer is a stress for businesses who heavily rely on the Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation for much of their fees. The situation is very different today, while older generations may have profited from traditional advisors during an age of very high returns and interest rates. Companies must navigate these waters carefully not to appear too digital to their traditional customer base, while also not appearing to be laggards to your customer that is younger that is prospective. While a robo advisor service might be an excellent way to keep AUM amounts steady inside the business, as younger family members inherit assets from older ones, it may have to be branded separately from other types of accounts.

FinTech Tendencies :

There’s an age old question in wealth management and investment guidance : Man or Machine. The conflict has started today.
Over the last six years, a related section of FinTech that’s received a lot of curiosity, and a fair share of controversy, is automated investment services… or what’re frequently called “robo advisors. ”
These technology-backed advisors were assembled on the premise that many of the actions performed by a Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) can be replicated by complex intuitive software. They guarantee lower prices, simplicity of making investing “fun” and also the bonus potential.
Robo – advisers like Wealthfront and Betterment have realized something that 99% of startups never do – turning an idea into an organization that is growing, prospering, and has the chance to be a permanent fixture in its industry.
In reality, the $47 trillion wealth management giant BlackRock only acquired FutureAdvisor, another robo advisor platform with $600 million under management

But the process of creative destruction in the FinTech business is occurring so quickly, I started questioning whether dangers that were competitive can already jeopardize comparatively new success stories like these. Looking at the companies that bookend them – the old-guard firms on one side, and the brand new crop of products and startups on the other — I came away with a healthy dose of skepticism on the future of the stand-alone robo-advisor.

Robo Advisors and the Bet on Millennials
One of the central selling points robo advisors made to the VCs who have funded them was a toxic mistrust of more traditional wealth counselors and financial services firms, their DIY attitude, and millennials’ internet savvy. Given the two important financial disasters they’d experienced in their lifetime, these millennials supposedly harbored a degree of mistrust for the fiscal brands their parents revered that would make defection a near-certainty. They viewed the large banks as inherently bad, and perilously self interested.

As it turns out… a recent report conducted by Salesforce indicates that many millennials actually do favor having an advisor.. Eighty-one percent wanted their counselor to manage their money completely alone, or collaboratively with them compared to 86% for Gen- 89% for Baby Boomers and X’ers — not that distinct.
What is more astonishing is that millennials stood out as the generation most interested in face-to-face interactions with the advisor – 47% get investment advice versus 36% for Gen- 46% for Baby Boomers and X’ers. The number one reason millennials gave for firing their adviser was high fees, which robo- counselors have exploited with fees that are a fraction of the cost of conventional wealth management
Millennials are certainly somewhat less comfortable relying completely on technology as the incumbent robo, while their preference for technology was unmistakable – advisers envisaged. There stays a definite desire to learn just how to manage cash, in order to ask questions, express financial goals and to have a trustworthy adviser involved.

In short, it seems that robo- advisors won’t replace the conventional advisor ; they will sit alongside them to provide an optimal blend of human and technology brains.

In response to fit what younger investors are searching for, and to the increase of Wealthfront and Betterment, conventional financial advisors like Schwab and Vanguard recently established “robo advisor platforms” of their own that comprise a substitute for connect to an individual, if desirable.
They’ve slashed fees, and now offer a wider array of investment vehicles than the incumbent robo – advisers. And with early stage investments in FinTech quadrupling recently, it’s no surprise that after only a few months these hybrid platforms attracted an amount of capital that’s many times greater than what the stand-alone robos had accumulated in years.
What this tells us is that Wealthfront and Betterment are correct — many investors have elected to cease paying their more traditional RIAs for a service in which some facets can be performed by technology, info, and automation. And these benefits extend much beyond those who can afford the guidance of Schwab peers are ’sed by it. Millions of middle-income families may have access to a greater degree of guidance that is advanced than their net worth may have ever enabled before
But technology can’t create an investing worldview from an individual ’s special demands and aims, hold their hand and encourage them to stay composed. And these human qualities are valuable to investors than these companies may have estimated
Boom or Doom For Stand Alone Robo Advisors?
Since the incumbents offer merchandise that is similar with comparable fees, the stand alone advisers will need to convince investors that they have something the big guys don’t. Despite the trust and their inventions they’ve constructed with many investors, the stand alone robo-advisors haven’t yet shown they can generate better yields, net of fees. So they’ll need to explain how and why their algorithms are not inferior to the algorithms other companies can create. But if investors find the prospect of managing cash overly complex, the nuances of algorithm building will probably not make for a good advertising hook.
The recent spike in advertising by Betterment and Wealthfront indicates that they feel a need to match Schwab, etc. on their field of battle – which is a scary proposition given how well- financed the big brokerages are, and how seasoned they’ve become at mass media marketing.

It’s also likely to be a losing battle because incumbents like Fidelity and Vanguard can create fees on the inherent ETFs they put in customer portfolios, enabling an extended life value and therefore greater allowance for higher client acquisition prices.

Reed Hastings said that before HBO could become Netflix Neflix had to grow and become HBO. Using this example to the space that is advisory, it appears like the incumbents have refurbished Wealthfront and Betterment ’s secret sauce faster than these firms could replicate that value added human element that Schwab and Vanguard offer
I have no doubt a successful departure lies in these companies futures, but if and when they can be acquired, it’s going to probably be by a traditional company that also realizes that it needs to leverage new technology and become “half- man, half-machine”

Empirica lectures on Fund Industry Summit 2014

Empirica was invited to give a lecture on ‘Usage of Algorithmic Trading in investment funds’ at Fund Industry Summit 2014.

Conference gathered representatives from over 70 financial institutions. The event was held in Warsaw and plans are that it will be repeated in yearly cycles. Especially that both organisers and participants deemed the conference a success.

The agenda of the summit included 9 lectures on topics related to investment funds day-to-day operations like MIFID II and AIFMD European Union directeves, Internet funds distribution and organisation of self-care channels.

Empirica’s lecture, held by its CEO Michal Rozanski on ‘Usage of Algorithmic Trading in investment funds’ was a good opportunity to share with the wider audience results of our latest research regarding market impact reduction in high volume transactions.

 

FIS_Mrz_Speach2

Empirica CEO, Michal Rozanski during the lecture at Fund Industry Summit

Fund Industry Summit 2014

 Empirica CEO, Michal Rozanski during the lecture at Fund Industry Summit

Ekipa z Warszawy

 Our team on Empirica conference stand

Video summarizing Fund Industry Summit 2014

Empirica joins advisory board of London’s FinTech Connect

FintechConnect logo

Michal Rozanski, CEO of Empirica, was invited to join advisory board of FinTech Connect. The main purpose of the board would be to share knowledge and experiences with new fintech ventures looking for support.

FinTech Connect is a new initiative for the global community of financial technology stakeholders – investors, financial institutions, fintech startups and solution providers.

Empirica definitely sees a need for one place where people interested in advancement of financial technologies could exchange ideas, experiences and good practices. We are already taking part in similar initiative but on different field – IT Corner association for local software companies – and advantages of such an initiative are obvious to us. When such an idea gets critical mass of people involved that want to be active, then the effect is much more than the sum of its parts. IT Corner is living evidence of that. Therefore we are great fans and we will happily support the development of FinTech Connect.

FinTech Connect provides a digital hub and meeting place for the fintech sector. It allows start-ups, tech providers, investors and financial institutions to connect and do business through community platform. FinTech Connect has already thousands of members and the count is growing daily. In addition to start up events, FinTech Connect provides global seminars and conferences on subjects such as banking security, cash management and commercial payment strategies for corporate treasurers, and cloud IT platforms for financial institutions.

Steve Clarke, the founder and CEO of FinTech Connect says: ‘We launched FinTech Connect because we wanted to provide a global platform and community for  the fintech industry. With the incredible amount of innovation going on within many different technology hubs around the World, there is a natural element of fragmentation between stakeholders and it can at times, seem like innovation is taking place within micro-communities; either in certain geographies, sub sectors or on a smaller scale again within accelerator or incubator programmes.’

FinTech Connect is also organizing Europe’s most exciting exhibition of fintech startup innovation – FinTech Connect Live. This conference will gather over 2000 fintech professionals, over 100 exhibitors and over 100 speakers and visionaries all in one place for two days in London in December 2015.

 

Learn more about FinTech Connect at: www.fintechconnect.com

and about FinTech Connect Live at: www.fintechconnectlive.com .

Our Algorithmic Trading Platform in large brokerage house!

Empirica has successfuly finished the implementation of its Algorithmic Trading Platform in one of the largest brokerage houses in Poland.

Brokerage house will use our software to:

  • aid its internal trading operations, like market making of derivatives on Warsaw Stock Exchange
  • offer functionalities of our platform to its institutional clients, which will be able to build, test and execute their own algorithmic trading strategies

Implementation included connecting of our software system directly to the system of Warsaw Stock Exchange (Universal Trading Platform delivered by NYSE Technologies), as well as the integration with transaction systems of brokerage house. Additionally we have fulfilled and successfuly passed tests regarding the highest security, stability and performance requirements.

This implementation is an important milestone for our system. The usage by team of market makers is a proof that our system is capable of performing high-throughput and low latency operations on level required by most sophisticated traders on the capital marketets.

 

Robo advisors – new wave in FinTech

In the space between DIY investing and personal — but pricey — financial advisors sits the robo-advisor, a crop of firms that manage client portfolios via computer algorithms, cutting prices and passing the savings on to investors. These online advisers have taken off over the last several years: There are currently a couple hundred firms in the race.

What’s a robo advisor?
A robo-advisor is an on-line financial advisory firm that leverages automation and algorithms to help manage client portfolios. That automation empowers robo-advisors to offer investment management services to consumers for a fraction of the price of a financial advisor that is human. Lower fees, joined with superior features like automatic rebalancing and tax-loss harvesting, can yield higher returns.

How they work
Most of the companies urge portfolios of low cost exchange-traded funds according to surveys that are on-line that investors fill out. The thought is that investors will do with generally diversified portfolios and low fees.

The companies use algorithms to put investors into various portfolios according to risk tolerance.

How to use Robo-Advisor

Automated Customer Onboarding – the questionnaire

The questionnaire is the first step of using Robo Advisor. User’s profile is being created with parameters like:

  • age (defining overall risk aversion level)
  • investment goals (defining users expectations)
  • users experience with losses/gains
  • making important financial decisions

Our Robo Advisory platform covers the interpretation of user’s answers into automated advise.

 

Balance projection

Balance projection gives the user quick view how his portfolio balance would look like in the future for given investment values. In order to make the projection more eye-catching we introduced possibility of generating balance curve based on either static growth or mathematical function development. For example, on average, portfolio increases 4% every year.

 

Asset allocation

Asset allocation is the selection process of the right instruments adequate to users risk profile. Our platform allows to automate managing the allocation, using defined algorithm. For example, with higher portfolio risk we can invest more into stocks and with smaller portfolio risk we invest more into fixed income products. Real asset allocation model has to be decided.

 

User Portfolio,

It is possible to monitor user’s portfolio balance in user dashboard. Platform provides history of portfolio balance over the selected period. User is able to check his current portfolio allocation grouped by three factors:

  • Instrument type
  • Instrument sector
  • Instrument region

 

Portfolio rebalancing

Automated portfolio rebalancing is a crucial functionality for robo-advisory service. Let’s assume that user got asset allocation with 60% stocks and 40% fixed incomes. Over the time, because of the reinvesting dividends or other user-defined factor, his portfolio allocation changed to 70% stocks and 30% fixed incomes. User does not want to take such a big risk so we do portfolio rebalancing to back to original allocation.

 

 

List of successful robo advisors

Betterment
Betterment is a perfect starting point for young investors. They make investing easy for beginners by focusing on simple asset allocation, goal …

Personal Capital
A free and easy-to-use service that syncs up all your financial accounts in one location. Personal Capital creates summaries of your spending, net …

Wealthfront
An automated investing service with an emphasis on asset allocation with low fees. Wealthfront’s service really shines with taxable accounts….

Stash Invest
Stash could be the perfect investment app for a new investor. Its $5 minimum initial deposit removes the single biggest obstacle to investing, but the…

Fidelity Go
Fidelity’s entry into the robo-advisor service helps beginning investors. Its pricing is very transparent, and if you have an existing account, …

Aspiration
Aspiration may be the perfect robo-advisor service for anyone who wants to invest in socially responsible companies. They have low fees, and the fee-…

Vanguard Personal Advisor Services
Overall a solid entry into the robo-advisor space. Though the service will exclude beginning investors because of the high minimum deposit. Other robo…

WiseBanyan
WiseBanyan is a free robo-advisor service with some decent features. Unfortunately, we question if the business model is sustainable….

Hedgeable
Hedgeable brings the techniques of hedge funds down to the less well-heeled masses, so everyone can have access to the investment industry “secrets.”…

TradeKing Advisors
TradeKing Advisors is a platform well worth investigating if you’re looking for professional investment management at a very low fee and $500 deposit …

Charles Schwab Intelligent Portfolios
Overall a decent service that deserves a looking into. Though we question its large allocation to cash and choice of some of the ETFs in order to make…

LearnVest
LearnVest is a decent free budgeting tool. Though compared to its competitors lacks investment reporting. Financial planning is available for an …

Rebalance IRA
Rebalance IRA provides insight into your portfolio and helps you make better decisions by not letting emotions get in the way and selling too often, …

AssetBuilder
AssetBuilder might be a reasonable service to use on large accounts, particularly over $20 million where the annual fee is just 0.20%. But on smaller …

Financial Guard
Financial Guard offers straightforward advice, to upgrade your current portfolio, pay lower fees, and choose better funds. Their business model is …

SigFig
SigFig itself isn’t a bad service, but their recommendations seem simple at best. There are better robo-advisors available….

Wealthsimple
Truewealth

Personalcapital 

FutureAdvisor 

 

Extending the customer base

With a customer base that the size of each of the competition combined, based on Stein, robo advisory Betterment can also be bringing folks, along with assets. It’s not difficult to chalk that up to Stein, and its $0 account minimum admits that some of Betterment’s accounts are modest. But he says all of the customers counted in that tally are saving into funded accounts, with most putting a sizeable amount that is “ away.”

That minimum — or instead, the lack of one — has set the pressure on other robo advisors as well as traditional advisors, many of which have dropped their own minimums over the past year. Private Capital, which has $1.8 billion in assets under management, recently lowered its account minimum by an ambitious 75%, falling from $100,000 to $25,000. The company might have the ability to get away with a minimum still in five digits because its customers also get a dedicated financial advisor.

TradeKing Advisors has lowered its minimum. It found its two tiers of service with initial deposit conditions of $25, and $10,000 000; those minimums now sit at $ and $5, 000. Rich Hagen, the business’s CEO, told NerdWallet that minimums were lowered to remain competitive.

And Wealthfront lowered its account condition 500, noting from $5,000 to $ in a blog post that it was reacting to a “surge in demand” from youthful robo customers . Those customers desired to take advantage of Wealthfront’s generous pricing arrangement, which manages the first $10,000 completely free (Betterment bills 0.35% on accounts under $10,000 that consent to a minimum $100 monthly auto-deposit; those without auto-deposits are charged a monthly fee of $3. That $3 a month — which amounts to more than 7% per annum on a $500 balance — is a point of contention between the two robo-advisors, including a public war of words on Medium.)

 

 

What to look for

To the reader that is causal, the differences between robo advisory companies might appear small but in reality isn’t. You’ve got a choice between:

  • Minimuml Deposit – Some robo advisories it is possible to start out with others and nothing need substantial sums to begin with
  • Yearly Fees – Know about ETF fees and hidden costs
  • Asset allocation – Asset allocation of each robo advisory may differ quite a bit based upon how old you are, and just how their risk assessment questions are answered by you
  • Account Type Support – Do combined, they offer individual, IRA, etc.
  • Automation – Some robo services are 100% automated vs human assisted advice
  • Tax Optimization – Services like Tax-Loss Harvesting
  • Custody of Funds – Handled by you in which they give advice to trading, or directly by the company
  • Management of Assets – Manage only a part or all of your assets
  • Ending-Target – Retirement simply, or other targets (i.e kids education)

 

Best Robo Advisors – Breakdown by Asset Size (2016 Ranking Comparison)

Below is the listing of this year’s top robo advisors by asset size.

# Robo Advisors Total Assets Under Management*
1 Betterment $4,200,000,000
2 Charles Schwab $4,100,000,000
3 Wealthfront $2,800,000,000
4 Personal Capital $2,100,000,000
5 FutureAdvisor $600,000,000

Next release of our algorithmic platform. Version 1.3.4 – has code name “The Firebolt”.

Next implementations of our Algorithmic Trading Platform by customers don’t stop us from developing the platform itself. Working agile requires us to keep the pace in short and frequent iterations, which in case of product means frequent releases, keeping the whole product line stable.

A few iterations that we planned in our 1.3.4 release, code named by our developers ‘The Firebolt’, will include among others:

– even faster real-time replication of all server-side components in master-slave mode (for deployment in larger institutions)

– extended client side backtesting capabilities

– sophisticated charting of backtesting results and statistics

– multiscreen mode of client side application

– additional web-based server-side module for administration & management

 

For those curious about the release name and unfamiliar with Harry Potter, Firebolt is:

“The state-of-the-art racing broom. The Firebolt has unsurpassable balance and pinpoint precision. Aerodynamic perfection.”
—Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup

“The Firebolt has an acceleration of 150 miles an hour in ten seconds and incorporates an unbreakable Braking Charm. Price upon request.”
—Harry reads about the features of the Firebolt.

Speed, precision, balance, perfection. These are the words that describe our software, therefore choosing the code name was kind of obvious :).

 

The Firebolt broom

Warsaw Stock Exchange certifies our Trading Platform

 

Empirica’s Algorithmic Trading Platform has successfully passed the XDP protocol communication certification, issued by the Warsaw Stock Exchange.

From now on Empirica is officially listed as the ISV (Independent Software Vendor) for the Warsaw Stock Exchange.

WSE uses Universal Trading Platform delivered by NYSE Technologies. The same system is used by many other European and world stock exchanges. Fulfilment of technical criteria of Warsaw Stock Exchange makes certification for those markets only a formality for our platform.