Mo’Jie, the Chinese Capricorn who does wealth management

Written by Felix Yang || January 24 2017
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December 6th, 2016 China Merchants Bank (CMB) held its press conference in Shen’Zhen, China, for its new AI wealth management product: MachineGene Investment, or “Mo’Jie” in Chinese. The launch represented the first time a Chinese bank released a wealth management product based on AI/Robot technology.

Its Chinese name is “Mo’Jie”, which means 'Capricorn.' According to CMB, the choice of Capricorn is based on the Zodiac ideas. Wealth management requires Intelligence, Steady, Preciseness, Discipline, and these are represented by Capricorn. In general, the name shows CMB are using Fintech to aim at unlimited development in the whole wealth management universe.

Mo’Jie is included in the new version of CMB’s internet banking platform: APP5.0. As a new function in the app, Mo’Jie provides “made to measure” wealth management services. Based on huge amount of calculations, it can save the cost of investment, diversify the risks, and control human emotional biases. The investment starting point is RMB20,000 (USD$2899). In addition, the primary assets are from the Chinese publicly offered funds, because in the Chinese market, public funds are more mature, transparent, and have better liquidity compared to other assets.

Simply put, Mo’Jie can supposedly pick the right products from thousands of funds in Chinese market, according to the investor’s Risk and Return objectives and constrains based on modern portfolio theory. Its task is not to beat a certain index but to help the investor to achieve his/her financial goals. For investors, they only need to click a few times to confirm the purchase online or on their mobiles. At the back office, the system is complicated. Data shows the process includes more than 1.07 million calculations against 2400 funds on CMB’s platform every single day.20161212_CommentaryMo'Jie

Since early 2016, AI/Robot wealth management has been a popular topic in the financial industry in China. Many companies with different backgrounds, such as Credit Ease, Jimu.com, and JD Finance, have announced their Robot wealth management products. Compared to other players, Mo’Jie seems to attract more attention because it is the first product from the biggest player in wealth management: the commercial banks. However, there will be more competition in this area in the future. 

Mo'jie believes that its strength is in data. First of all, it catches the basic data of all the different public funds, such as the exact Shares, Bonds, Commodities, and other assets information. Secondly, CMB has its own non-standard data base, which includes data from fund managers’ historical performance and inside structure. As the biggest private bank and No.2 asset custody institution in China, CMB has its private access to fund managers’ information, which is normally difficult to find elsewhere. Finally, CMB also has a big mid-class customer base. Its golden and platinum customers are already over 7.5 million.

In the future, CMB will keep focusing on the combination of AI technology and wealth management data. They believe the satisfaction of the customers is the key of retail banking. As the pioneer in bank transformation, CMB has taken a step forward.