BNP Paribas Asset Management launches market commentary service for Alexa
Where did the specialist squawk services and tailored aggregated news go? Now, the banks are muscling in and Amazon’s monopoly expands
BNP Paribas Asset Management has launched a service that lets users access voice-activated market commentary and thought leadership through Amazon Alexa-enabled devices.
Th Investment Insights service gives Alexa users a five minute market update briefing every Monday, a one to two minute daily brief, a short wrap on Fridays, and a hub of market data such as ETF and stock prices, trading volumes and performance. The service is in English but French and German options could follow.
Hilda Tingle, head, digital marketing, BNP Paribas Asset Management, says: “We believe that voice-enabled interaction with our clients and investors will become increasingly important and the introduction of Investment Insights is a key development, enabling us to offer a voice experience that is more robust and complete than anything else that is currently available within the asset management market.”
It is interesting that a Tier 1 financial institution, and notably one that is the asset management division of a major investment bank, would go down this route, largely because some of the interesting initiatives taken a few years ago by specialist providers of aggregated news for FX traders have gone largely unnoticed by today’s brokers and traders. Whatever happened to potential partnerships with firms such as LiveSquawk?
RavenPack is certainly alive and well, however at the beginning of the last decade, it was very much a mainstay within the FX brokerage arena, was often mentioned in all manner of news and editorial relating to analytics, and was present at FX industry conferences, and former Thomson Reuters executive Jamie Coleman’s charismatic FXBeat was an important digest, available on various portals including FXStreet.
Today, the only longstanding and credible solution that is prominent and relevant to retail brokers and traders is that provided by Autochartist.
Various adaptations of squawk box-type news services existed, aimed at retail traders, but now the institutions are moving in with Amazon’s monopolistic backing.