Young developer starts off robo advice site

Describing himself as web developer and futurist, Andrew Montague is the founder of Investful - a robo-adviser platform which promotes 'sophisticated, personalised portfolio management for everyone'. "We would like to provide a platform that enables Kiwis to get financial freedom, and the first small step we can take is by providing a really nice KiwiSaver platform that's low fees and good returns for investors."

For the moment, Investful is in a conceptual phase which requires market validation - and the all important regulatory green light. However the landing page for recently created website provides an insight into marketing offer of a 'smart, personalised KiwiSaver' with low fees.

Montague graduated from the University of Canterbury with a B.Com in economics and finance, but the 26 year old now works full-time as a web developer after graduating from the Enspiral Dev Academy. His aim is to create a web application along the lines of Trade Me or Xero, and he hopes that his participation in a start-up accelerator early next year will give him the project a  "leg up".

Having studied the robo-advice market for some years, Montague believes that there's a demand from investors who resent paying high fees. While he says there's "nothing wrong" with performance fees, he believes that it's difficult to beat the market in the long term and an automating the portfolio management process will eliminate the need for multiple fund managers.