Does a robot manage your money? For many of us, the answer is yes. Online and algorithmic investment and financial advice is easy to come by these days, usually under the moniker of "robo-advisor." Startups such as Wealthfront, Personal Capital, and Betterment launched robo-advisors as industry disruptors, and incumbents, such as Schwab's (Intelligent Advisor), Vanguard (Personal Advisor Services), Morgan Stanley and BlackRock have joined the fray with their own hybrid machine/advisor solutions. It's clear that robo-advisors and AI play an important and growing role in the financial services industry, but a question remains. Will robo-advisors disrupt corporate capital allocation the same way they have personal capital allocation?

The topic of machine learning–enabled artificial intelligence (AI) is gaining increasing visibility in the world of investment management. Of particular interest is the application of AI to the development of smarter robo-advisers that some hope, while others fear, will yield "intelligent" and cost-effective investment management advice. This topic was raised by investment professionals during recent CFA Institute traveling conference that went to Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East. AI has also been the subject of a recent European Commission (EC) consultation document, to which CFA Institute submitted a response. For the uninitiated reader, some quick defining of terms could be helpful.

Robo-advisers are forecast to take at least 15% market share of the Asian wealth management industry in the next seven years. Platform providers highlight the innovations that are driving the industry forward and debunk common myths about the financial technology. Robo-advisory platforms have grown exponentially in Asia in the past two years. Innovations have resulted in enhanced and more sophisticated offerings for investors. This will only propel the growth of the industry. Bhaskar Prabhakara, co-founder and CEO of Singapore-based robo-advisory platform WeInvest, expects robo-advisers to take at least 15% market share of the Asian wealth management industry by 2025. "There is a strong case for this. We went to many countries to talk to regulators and look for partners and everywhere we went, people acknowledged the fact that the robo-advisory wave -- a digital wealth tsunami -- is coming," he says.

Robo-advisory services are often associated with millennials. This makes sense since these services' client base skews younger than that of traditional wealth management firms. Wealthfront, for instance, has previously reported that 60% of its customers are younger than 35, while Betterment has said that 75% of its customers are under the age of 50. Robo-advisers also offer features that millennials prefer: simple and transparent fee structures, an intuitive digital user experience, and personalization based on the user's appetite for risk. Plus, today's robo-advisers are aggressively positioning themselves as the millennials' answer to traditional, stodgy wealth management firms, as evidenced by their marketing campaigns.

Asked if a computer will ever be able to give better investment advice than a human, Oliver Bussmann does not hesitate. "I believe it's possible," said Bussmann, who until March was the chief information officer of UBS. Banks' wealth management departments and other investment firms are starting to adopt artificial intelligence. This is different from the robo-advisers you've probably heard about. Those have simplistic, rules-based models -- you give them your age, risk tolerance, goals, and so on and they select a basket of exchange-traded funds for you.

Ever since robo-advisers hit the scene in 2008, these low-cost online automated investing firms (roughly $67 billion under management) have mostly targeted Millennials. The thinking at the likes of Betterment, Wealthfront and FutureAdvisor: people in their 20s and 30s are tech-savvy, want to keep investing costs down and don't have enough money to interest human financial advisers. "The baby boom generation has more money, but they've got complicated situations like retirement," Wealthfront's founder, Adam Nash, told CNBC. But now, boomers are increasingly saying: We want in. And one new robo-adviser (True Link Financial, partnering with Schwab) is specifically targeting retirees and people within five years of retirement.

It is done by various possible people such as investment managers, wealth managers, financial advisers and even accountants. Since just a few years a range of new fintechs hit the market with so-called robo-advisers or automated financial advice tools. They have been popping up (and keep popping up) in no time and some already even dissapeared. It will be hard for robo-adviser startups to scale; differentiating their services is key. Robo-advisers, essentially software tools driven by artificial intelligence and crunching loads of data, are predicted to be an important growing category of fintech.

The words'private banking' can evoke some stereotypical images, like leather-backed chairs in rooms with wood-panelled walls and bookshelves filled with expensive tomes or expensively attired Swiss bankers parcelling out bits of investment wisdom over snifters of brandy and cigars. One item not typically included? The rise and rise of new technology is upending many assumptions in finance. Technologically savvy companies are already competing fiercely with banks in areas such as retail banking and small company loans. They now see private banking as their next hunting ground. Automated investment programmes, often called robo-advisers, use algorithms to arrange individual investment portfolios based upon stated preferences – for a fraction of the fees charged by private banks.