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Even before Burton Malkiel popularised the term in 1973, investors had begun taking random walks and applying other theories supporting diversification of their portfolios. Yet today, the investment community, in particular the decision-making community, might be observed to be concentrating.

Singapore fintech firm Noviscient is looking to change the way investors find alpha via a technology driven platform that helps select and allocate to quality alpha funds.Scott Treloar, founder at Noviscient in Singapore, said the technology was similar to how Amazon provided a matching service for customers and suppliers. Noviscient’s platform, however, allowed the firm to tailor custom solutions for investors from trade data collected from participating funds, making it more than just a matching service.

A few years ago, as the chief risk officer at an Asian alternative investments firm, Scott Treloar found himself in an unexpected situation.The company, which had been managing over US$5 billion, was trying to raise capital for hedge funds. Treloar thought it would be a breeze.Much to his surprise, no one was interested – and they failed to raise any money.Investors said they weren’t keen on hedge funds, as those had been performing poorly for the past decade. In 2019, fund managers underperformed in the S&P 500 Index – a commonly used benchmark – for the ninth consecutive year.

Singapore-based AI open-platform fund manager Noviscient has been selected as one of eight winners and the first Asian startup to join the Copenhagen Fintech Accelerator.The Singaporean-Danish FinTech tie continues to pave the way for strong startup collaboration – the latest living proof is Noviscient, pointed out the investment management firm in a press release.

We’ve organized our first webinar in January 2019. During this webinar, our founder Scott Treloar discusses the benefits of working with as an Alpha Partner, how to get started and how you can connect to us. In case any of you have questions about this, please email us at alpha@noviscient.com.

By Klaus Wille(Bloomberg) — Scott Treloar, a former Deutsche Bank AG quant specialist, has started his own hedge fund that allocates money to traders around the world.Noviscient Pte aims to have $40 million of assets by the end of this year and $250 million by December 2019, Treloar said in an interview. He’s targeting returns of 10 percent to 15 percent a year — more than double the average hedge fund return of the past 10 years of 4.6 percent, according to data provider Eurekahedge Pte. The fund will charge a 36 percent performance fee, but won’t levy management charges.Rather than employ portfolio managers in his Singapore office, Treloar allocates funds to strategies provided by traders based around the world. A commodity futures trader with a doctorate in machine learning is based in Australia, while another is working from the U.S. and focuses on systematic volatility trading of ETFs.

In my last post, I discussed the importance of the financial industry for everyone from individual investors to nation-states. It plays a critical role in allocating risk and capital which enables economic growth. I suggested that the mechanism for effective allocation is the fair pricing of securities and that active fund managers are the main agents to make this work. Active managers create value by helping to keep prices fair thereby supporting efficient allocation of risk and capital.

The traditional hedge fund model is no longer working. Performance is poor. Costs are high. Alignment is low. It needs to change. The three forces driving this need for change are:Increasing costs as regulators and investors demand higher operational standardsPressure on fees as investors are become more sophisticated and expect more for lessGreater competition making the markets more efficient and fragmenting available alph.

We are in one of the most interesting times in investment management. There will be more opportunities to build great businesses than ever before, but they will be different from the past. At Noviscient we are working very hard to re-imagine how investment management can and should work. We are in the process of building one of these great businesses.From our point of view, the current business model for active management and hedge funds is not working. Fees are high, performance is poor and alignment is low. This is an opportunity but it needs a new approach.

In the last post, we were left with the suspicion that the asset management industry has some work in front of it to be “ready, willing and able” to create value for its investors.Are we ready to radically change our processes and infrastructure and mindsets?Are we willing to completely restructure our fees and operate with full transparency to be truly aligned with our investors?With our existing people, technology and capabilities, are we able to offer real risk-adjusted performance while cutting costs by up to 90% and delivering real-time engagement for our investors?