Advisers look to AI for future of investment, survey shows

In a statement yesterday, quantitative investment manager Man AHL released the results of its 2016 survey, which examined the views of 121 financial advisers at Man AHL events across Australia.

Of the advisers surveyed, 74 per cent said machine learning “has the potential to change the way we invest in the future”.

Machine learning, driven by the rise of big data and evolving technologies, is emerging as a powerful quantitative investment tool, with financial advisers increasingly recognising the benefits it can bring to investors, Man AHL said.

Speaking at one of the events, Man AHL’s Oxford-based chief scientist Dr Anthony Ledford said machine learning has become increasingly important to the alternative investment management industry as it deals with larger and more complex data-sets.

“The rise of machine learning in quantitative investing is powered by three separate revolutions: the growth in computing power; the explosion of data generation; and the maturing of methodologies from statistics, computer science, mathematics and engineering, among other disciplines,” Dr Ledford said.

“As more data becomes available, sophisticated machine learning models enable new patterns to be detected that humans can’t easily spot.

"The technology is a significant area of research focus for Man AHL and we believe our enhanced focus on machine learning will be strongly supportive of the evolution of our quantitative investment strategies.”