Chonladet ‘Nuek’ Khemarattana's company Robowealth has launched Thailand's first robo-advisory investment product. Here he explains how his company is disrupting the fintech industry for the better
Under 5 percent of Thai people own stocks or mutual funds, and only a very small number have access to any sort of investment they can afford. That means many people struggle to build their wealth, entrenching inequality.
Chonladet ‘Nuek’ Khemarattana has set out to change that, backed by an army of robots. His company Robowealth is a fintech trailblazer, launching Odini, Thailand’s first robo-advisory investment product, back in 2018, and following it with a suite of other products offering algorithmic investment services.
With a background in traditional finance, Chonladet worked after university for a range of banks and large conglomerates, following that with a period in the securities industry, where he eventually rose to managing director of Apple Wealth Securities.
“I made a decision to resign from that generous package and found my own fintech startup,” he says. “I thought this was going to be an era or disruption; instead of being disrupted, I had to disrupt someone else.”
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The company started off providing securities houses with automated trading services, but then a friend suggested experimenting with robots. With Thailand then lacking any robo-advisory services, he first consulted the nation’s regulators, with the result that he had to acquire a mutual fund brokerage licence. That’s because most of his products provide execution as well as advice, with customers deciding their preferences up front and algorithms analysing a range of data to make sure their portfolio is appropriately balanced.
There’s always going to be a certain amount of resistance to the idea of investment management without a human component, something that Robowealth has gone out of its way to counter. “Initially we thought offering a purely robotic product would appeal, but Thais like to see some human touch,” says Chonladet. “We communicate that we have professional human fund managers and analysts alongside the robot.”