Robo-advisor

What it is

A robo-advisor is a licensed service that allocates and rebalances a portfolio on your behalf, using software rather than a human adviser.

Two things make it what it is, and the second is the one people drop:

1. It acts for you — not “here is what I would buy”, but “this is your portfolio, rebalanced”
2. It is licensed to do so

Why the licence is the whole point

Advice about securities is a licensed activity. In China, public fund advisory (基金投顾) began as a pilot in October 2019 with a named list of institutions, and the CSRC published a draft rule for the business in June 2023 to move it from pilot to standing regulation.

The practical consequence: a firm without that licence may not decide and execute on your behalf. It may publish research, sell software, or sell data. It may not take your money and trade it while calling itself an adviser.

So when a product says “AI 投顾”, the first question is not about the model. It is: whose licence?

How it differs from AI quant

	Robo-advisor	AI quant
What is sold	Someone to manage your money	A strategy, or the tools to build one
Regulatory basis	Advisory licence	Trade reporting as programmatic trading
Where the money comes from	Management or advisory fee	The strategy’s own returns
Who carries the loss	Still you — but the duty of care is regulated	You, entirely

The distinction matters because the two get marketed with the same vocabulary. A model that outputs “buy this” is not a robo-advisor. It is a signal, and selling it as advice is a different regulated activity.

How to check

Ask three questions, and require a name for each:

1. Who holds the licence, and which one?
2. Whose account does the money sit in?
3. Who is liable if the advice is wrong?

If any answer is vague, it is not a robo-advisor. It is stock tips with better typography — see skin in the game.