AQUMON INVESTING FOR THE MASSES

Fintech comes in all shapes and sizes. But for many people, fintech is an exotic concept, especially for small-time investors. The field of Robo-advisors to help investors is growing as more and more people looking to diversify their investments.

- 

This week, SME speaks to Kelvin Lei, co-founder and CEO of Agumon, robo-wealth management service for small or new investors.

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO START AQUMON?

Finance was always something I knew I would get into as soon as I got out of university. My career led me through different posts in banks and I ended up in the Fixed Income and Sales & Trading team at Deutsche Bank – it was a very lucrative business until the financial crisis. That was when I realized the banking industry’s policies were not always in the interest of clients. Bankers were incentivized to sell sophisticated derivatives to those who didn’t understand the risks. Moreover, quality advisory services were only offered to premier clients while retail investors could hardly get any personal investment advice. In fact, as someone who worked in Finance themselves, I personally found it very difficult to invest in other products as a retail investor. That was when I realized there’s a market for digital, algo-driven wealth management products – I wanted to create a solution for anyone to invest.