Kristoffer Fürst separates automation from efficiency in investment management. Automation runs a full process on its own, like rebalancing a portfolio end-to-end. Efficiency gives a portfolio manager the right information to do it faster themselves. He says efficiency is usually more practical.
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Yeah. What are my views on automation? First of all, I think it's important to recognize that there's a difference between automation and efficiency. So if we take a rebalancing of a portfolio as an example, automation, that would be that the system automatically, according to rules or whatever it might be, handles that process completely and autonomously. So it runs that rebalancing program, creates the orders, checks compliance, makes decisions about what to do with potential breaches, whatever it might be, routes it to market, etc. That's automation efficiency is empowering a portfolio manager to go through that process as fast as possible. So not just reducing the number of clicks, fast processing time, but also just giving the information just information that is required at all steps of the process and nothing more. And those are fundamentally two different things and I think the latter is a lot more achievable in practice and for most workflows than automation. That doesn't mean I think one is better than the other. I just think there are more practical use cases for increasing efficiency then for automation within the investment management workflow essentially.