Global business news twenty four hours a day. If Bloomberg dot Com the radio plus mobile lap and on your radio. This is a Bloomberg business flag from Bloomberg World Headquarters, Signed Charlie Pellett. Just getting word from GAP that it's July comp sales down four percent. Estimates were for a drop of one percent. Lending Club's loss widened to eighty one point four million in the second quarter as the online loan ventures sought to contain damage from a surprise
leadership change in May. The company also expanded that shake up, replacing its chief financial officer. Stocks lower SMP five hundred index dropping two points a little change, down one tenth
of one percent. Down. Industrial is also down one tenth of one percent, falling fourteen points to eighteen thousand, five hundred, twenty nine, Gold down three forty anounced the thirteen thirty six and drop there of three tenths of one percent, and crude Oil West Texas Intermediate up two and a half percent of one oh six and barrel to eight six. I'm Charlie Pelts, and that's a Bloomberg Business flash. It is is taking stoff with Kathleen Hayes on Bloomberg Radio.
I think that financial technology innovation only comes from companies whose names you've never heard of. Not true. Joining us now, Ram Nagapon. He is the chief information officer for Pershing. They're based in Jersey City, New Jersey, and he's here to tell us more about the challenges and the opportunities in fintech. Rom It's always a pleasure. Thank you very
much for coming in. How do you describe fintech to people that say, all right, I understand financial and I understand technology, but what's the big deal about putting them together? Tell us about it. Okay, thank you for having me here, so then talk about fintech. There are two things that I'm going to tell you. One is there are companies using technology to disrupt that's disrupting something, and then there are companies that uses technology to enable experiences to make
it a lot better. These are the two different things right now, both is going to happen because the first example are when the big companies are inefficient. These companies are looking for opportunity to take them out on those areas that's disrupting them. Then the other side are enablers. They actually work with you, They actually enhances the overall experience that actually brings you a lot of good things
about it. Both are good, both will happen, but I think more good is going to happen on enabling the fin techs along with you. That's my view on this. All right, So let's talk about enabling for just a moment. Because in the world a registered investment advisors and money man chuers, uh, they are constantly trying to juggle, right, You're juggling what the client wants, what your organization or your research is telling you. But then also you're having to do it at a lower and lower cost point.
Tell us about this. So the advisors in develop management space is challenged by, as you said, two things. One is providing the best client experience and the other you said is about efficiency or how they operate. Yes, they got to be very efficient. They got to look for technology and innovation that's going to help them operate very efficient because they want to spend time with their client and actually do the right thing for their client. That's
what they want to focus now. Delivering the right experience to their client is important and that's needed in the demographics that's changing. Between how they use the technology so where they should focus immediately is applied technology to become very efficient and focused on the client. Now, as far as focusing on the client goes, a lot of this has to do with things that are custom made because
not every client fits into the same box. How have you used the technology or open the technology rather at Pershing in order to give the registered rep the tools that are customizable. So what we have done is sometimes the anyone who tries to take the technology on the hand should be willing to spend consistently to keep up the integration and experience together. That's a hard thing to do. Certain advisers of the r A is willing to do it.
That's good they will and for them we have opened up the Pershing services as an API, which is Application programming interface where they can tap our services and put it into an integration model. That's one thing for certain r s who does not want to spend all that money and they come to Persing for all the technology things that we have done for them, we give and end to end solution that they get on our platform
and they can use all the type of services. So this might be everything from trade initiation to execution to settlement, to then portfolio managed. That is correct. All these pieces are all properly integrated into one platform to for them to easily get on board. So that's the other model. So now there are pros and counts to these models. Depending on who you are and what your business model is, you will end up picking which one do you want
to go with. Use the term digital advice in this context, so a digital advice, I know the term robo advice, digital advice. There are many things being used. There are two connotations here. One is wow, then the technology is going to take away the role of an advisor, and the other one is the technology is going to help advisor do things a lot better. So I'm on the side of technology is going to help you. It's going to enable you to do your thing a lot better.
That's on the side, and it cannot be replaced because we talked about artificial intelligence for the last thirty years. Did it replace any human being? No, But it's an augmenting it's helping you. So the digital advice is about how do you use this technology to make your job a lot better so that you could be a great advisor to your client. What would be one thing that you wish sure that you foresee in the future that advisors will have access to that will demonstrably improve their
performance or their customer service. It's about applying more and more nor technology to help the experience a lot better. That is important. Um, you know, whatever they do. Uh. It started with give me sound by twenty four access to my information. That's a couple of years ago that it started. And now keep me connected all the time, that's the second thing. Now it could be future. You know, I want to be completely predictive. Give me a lot
of cognitive things. Those things are going to happen in the future. So it's about keep up with the evolution of the technology and selvia clients. Thanks very much for joining me from Nagapon. He is the chief investment officer for Pershing. They're based in Jersey City, New Jersey. Thanks for joining me on taking stock. I'm pim Fox. This is Bloomberg coming up. Bloomberg Law discusses whether there is a legal claim to delay or to completely stop Britain's
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