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FAQ
- Can I invest my money with Bambu?
- Does Bambu provide a multi-goal robo-advisory experience?
- Does Bambu provide an API for the client onboarding process?
- Does Bambu provide an end-to-end KYC capability?
- How does Bambu risk-rate their end clients?
- Does Bambu handle payments?
- Does Bambu provide execution?
- Does Bambu provide custody of securities and/or cash?
- Can Bambu’s robo-advisory platform buy into ETFs and mutual funds?
- What asset classes and financial products can be traded using Bambu’s robo-advisory platform?
- What currencies can be traded using Bambu’s robo-advisory platform?
- Does Bambu provide model portfolios to plug into my robo-advisor?
- How do we create model portfolios?
- Do Bambu’s portfolios beat the market?
- Can the portfolios used in Bambu’s robo-advisory platform be tailored to each client?
- What degree of customization can be done in terms of investment logic?
- Can Bambu handle a master account?
- Can Bambu just provide the transactional bits I need to build my own robo-advisor?
- Does Bambu provide a rebalancing engine?
- Is it true that goal-based investing is just a simple overlay that can be added to any trading platform?
- What corporate actions can Bambu take care of?
- Can Bambu process my client's annual review?
- How do I make money with my robo-advisory platform?
- Can Bambu send statements to our end clients?
- Does Bambu use external market data?
- Will my clients beat the market when they invest with my robo-advisor?
- Can we feed any financial product in our robo-advisor?
Can I invest my money with Bambu?
Unfortunately, individuals are not able to. Bambu has a business-to-business model, which means they build and develop technology for financial institutions that require an automated retirement advisory platform for end-users or consumers.
Does Bambu provide a multi-goal robo-advisory experience?
Yes. Bambu’s robo-advisory platform provides multi-goal financial planning by default. Any other logic may require customization to meet your business needs.
Does Bambu provide an API for the client onboarding process?
Definitely! Bambu has the right APIs and journeys that will allow your business to integrate a client’s onboarding process into your platform. In most cases, the end client’s data are exchanged with the broker/custodian and your database.
Does Bambu provide an end-to-end KYC capability?
No. If Bambu does help collect end-clients’ information, the KYC remains your responsibility or the responsibility of the third-party broker/custodian. The end clients are your clients, not Bambu’s.
How does Bambu risk-rate end clients?
Bambu can implement your risk scoring logic and journey. You can also adopt Bambu’s template for risk-scoring logic and journey, which covers risk capacity and risk tolerance for a given goal. Bambu also provides a risk-scoring API to calculate the end risk scores based on your input data points.
Does Bambu handle payments?
Bambu does not directly handle fundings; however, it is integrated or can integrate with payment gateways to fund your end-client’s portfolios.
Does Bambu provide execution?
No. Bambu is not a broker; however, we are able to integrate, or we already are integrated, with brokers that can provide execution for ETFs and mutual funds.
Does Bambu provide custody of securities and/or cash?
No, Bambu is not a custodian. However, we can integrate with our current brokers to provide custody of securities and/or cash.
Can Bambu’s robo-advisory platform buy into ETFs and mutual funds?
Yes. We can integrate with a broker/custodian to purchase ETFs and mutual funds as long as they support those assets.
What asset classes and financial products can be traded using Bambu’s robo-advisory platform?
Businesses can trade any asset class and financial products provided that can be traded and customised satisfactorily, typically with daily liquidity and valuations.
What currencies can be traded using Bambu’s Robo-advisory platform?
Our platform can use any product in any currency, provided it can be traded in a satisfactory fashion, typically with daily liquidity and valuations.
Does Bambu provide the model portfolios to plug into my robo-advisor?
Bambu is not a regulated money management firm. The responsibility of building model portfolios lies with our business-to-business (B2B) clients. Nevertheless, Bambu can provide tools and advisory to help you build model portfolios.
How do we create model portfolios?
Typically, robo-advisors invest their clients into model portfolios. There are a few ways to build them. If you are an international financial institution or asset manager, you may not need any help with building model portfolios; it is precisely your skillset. However, if you are a small or medium-sized financial institution or asset manager, you may need assistance in terms of product screening, mean-variance optimisation, and backtesting. If you have no financial footprint, you may want to partner with an asset manager to cobrand model portfolios so that you can leverage on their portfolio construction know-how and brand. Bambu can be your partner for that.
Do Bambu’s portfolios beat the market?
Bambu is not a regulated money management firm. The responsibility of building model portfolios lies with our business-to-business (B2B) clients.
Can the portfolios used in Bambu’s robo-advisory platform be tailored to each client?
To a certain degree, yes. Typically, a model portfolio is assigned to an end client based on their risk profile for that specific goal; it will take his/her risk capacity and risk tolerance for that specific goal into account. Normally, the risk profile will be reassessed at least annually so the linked model portfolio will change as it changes. Further customisation would have to be assessed by Bambu.
What degree of customization can be done in terms of investment logic?
The Bambu platform can be tailored to fit your needs and is ready for customization. There’s an agreement that must occur before proceeding between Bambu and the client.
Can Bambu handle a master account?
Yes. Bambu can deal with a transactional logic whereby all orders are pulled together and transacted at a master account level. Bambu has all the order aggregation and order splitting APIs to handle such a setup
Can Bambu just provide the transactional bits I need to build my own robo-advisor?
Yes. With Bambu, you can build a multi-goal and transactional robo-advisor platform with all the features needed to meet your business goals, such as investment, redemption, switching, order aggregation, order splitting, dividend allocation, rebalancing, trading calendar, and risk scoring.
Does Bambu provide rebalancing engine?
Yes, Bambu’s platform offers threshold-based, time-based, and on-demand rebalancing back to model. If needed, our rebalancing APIs can be plugged into your platform.
Is it true that goal-based investing is just a simple overlay that can be added to any trading platform?
No, you can’t and shouldn’t simply add it to any trading platform.
Goal-based investing has profound consequences on the way assets are traded and accounted for.
Firstly, an account will be divided into several goals while all units, cash, and dividend payments will be split accordingly.
The robo-advisor maintains a ledger of all these split units and constantly reconciles against the custodian. For these reasons, a whole suite of APIs is needed to aggregate, split, harmonise, and rebalance. Also, the ease of implementing a robo-advisor dramatically depends on how modern the broker/custodian is, mainly how they communicate trades, positions, and events.
What corporate actions can Bambu take care of?
Our platform and APIs automatically treat frequent corporate actions such as dividend payments. The non-frequent corporate actions, such as stock split, are not processed automatically and will need manual adjustments by your back office and with the Bambu Operations team’s assistance.
Can Bambu process my clients annual review?
Yes, our platform offers annual review, which is typically done goal per goal.
How do I make money with my robo-advisory platform?
There are a few ways to collect fees from your end clients. Bambu can implement a customized solution, but our template implementation is to have an asset-under-management-based fee accrued and paid regularly, with a tiered fee schedule if needed. Bambu is not a billing platform, so any additional functionalities, such as rebates and promotions, would require integrating with a third-party solution.
Can Bambu send statements to our end clients?
Bambu’s robo-advisory platform typically relies on the broker/custodian’s capability to generate and host statements. Nevertheless, any customised statements can be added if needed.
Does Bambu use external market data?
Our robo-advisory platform typically relies on financial data as provided by the broker/custodian. Any other integration with an external data provider would come as customization.
Will my clients beat the market when they invest with my Robo-advisor?
Robo-advisory is not about beating the market. It is about getting your clients invested into well-diversified portfolios that fit their financial goals and risk profile.
The only free lunch of investing is diversification. Importantly, regular investment and rebalancing remove the emotional part of investing, which is what tends to lead to bad decisions.
Can we feed any financial product in my Robo-advisor?
The products need to be priced and tradable daily. They also need to be customized by someone. If your robo-advisor targets long-term investing, it also helps if products are not too complex to assume realistic, expected returns and volatility for each of them.
For the latter, preferred underlying securities are mutual funds or ETFs, but we can imagine using structured products to replicate an index.