A rising fund manager star at T Rowe Price predicts that computers will become increasingly important in asset management, supplanting the industry’s traditional backbone of human stock pickers, economists and analysts.

基金管理行业的一颗“新星”——来自T Rowe Price的苏希尔•南达预测，计算机将在资产管理中发挥越来越重要的作用，逐渐取代作为该行业传统中坚力量的人类选股者、经济学家和分析师。

Sudhir Nanda, the head of T. Rowe’s new dedicated “quantitative management” arm, has for the past decade managed the $761bn asset manager’s Diversified Small-Cap Growth Fund, a $2.3bn computer-powered, systematic vehicle that invests in small US companies. The fund has outperformed 93 per cent of its peers over the past five years, returning over 10 per cent annually, according to Bloomberg data.

T Rowe的资产管理规模达7610亿美元，南达是该公司新成立的“量化管理”部门的主管。在过去10年里，他负责管理公司旗下的“多元化小盘股成长型基金”(Diversified Small-Cap Growth Fund)。该基金规模为23亿美元，是一款计算机化、系统化的投资工具，投资标的为美国小企业。彭博(Bloomberg)数据显示，在过去5年里，该基金的表现胜过了93%的同类基金，年收益率高于10%。

T. Rowe last week launched three new funds to complement Mr Nanda’s own vehicle, underscoring the rising interest in more systematic, computer-aided investment approaches even among the big traditional asset managers.

上周T Rowe发行了三只新基金，对南达自己管理的基金构成补充。此举凸显出，就连大型传统资产管理公司都对更系统化的计算机辅助投资方法越来越感兴趣。

Quantitative hedge funds, which utilise powerful computers, complex mathematical models and automated trading algorithms have been around for several decades, but Mr Nanda predicts that the traditional investment management industry will also become increasingly technology driven.

利用功能强大的计算机、复杂数学模型和自动化交易算法的量化对冲基金已问世几十年了，但南达预测，传统的投资管理行业也将日益受到技术因素的推动。

“Having a human is still important. Humans aren’t going to be completely replaced, but they will be mostly replaced,” he said.

“雇佣人类员工仍很重要。人类不会被完全取代，但大部分人将被取代，”他说。

Asset managers including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs Asset Management and Schroders are pouring money into new technology, “big data” and more computer programmers to ensure they do not fall by the wayside in an increasingly ruthless investment world, where many fund managers have over time failed to beat their indices.

包括贝莱德(BlackRock)、高盛资产管理公司(Goldman Sachs Asset Management)和施罗德(Schroders)在内，许多资产管理公司开始大举投资新技术和“大数据”，并使用更多计算机程序员，以保证自己在越来越无情的投资领域不会落伍。随着时间的推移，许多基金经理未能跑赢他们所追踪的指数。

While Mr Nanda stressed that T. Rowe’s own human portfolio managers have a decent record of navigating financial markets, he said it was inevitable that many jobs would naturally be done more efficiently and cheaply by computers.

尽管南达强调，T Rowe自己的人类投资组合经理在金融市场上取得了相当好的业绩，但他说，未来许多工作自然是由计算机来完成更有效率、更节省成本，这一点是不可避免的。

“Our humans have done pretty well compared to most humans, but we definitely see a trend where machines do more and more in markets,” he said. “They’re becoming more powerful, so they’re going to do more.”

“和大多数人相比，我们的人员已经做得非常好了，但我们肯定会看到一个趋势——机器在市场上承担越来越多的工作，”他说。“机器变得越来越强大，所以它们将负担更多工作。”

In a speech this year Andrew Haldane, the Bank of England’s chief economist, considered whether there was an industrial revolution brewing in the finance industry — brought on by huge strides in technology — that might see many jobs replaced by robots.

英国央行(BoE)首席经济学家安德鲁•霍尔丹(Andrew Haldane)在今年一次演讲中提出：金融业是否正在酝酿一场工业革命，由技术的巨大进步引发，可能会导致很多岗位被机器人取代？

“Driven by significant advances in technological capabilities, the explosion of big data, more powerful software and low-cost, scalable cloud computing, artificial intelligence appears to finally be at a real tipping point,” the Institute of International Finance, a finance industry trade body, wrote in a report last month.

“在技术能力进步巨大、大数据爆炸、更强大的软件以及低成本、可扩展云计算的推动下，人工智能似乎终于来到了真正的拐点上，”国际金融协会(IIF)上月在一份报告中写道。

“The use of AI in financial services is likely to have an outsized impact on functions and employment as the automation of advanced roles becomes feasible,” the report concluded.

“随着高级职位的自动化变得可能，人工智能在金融服务业的应用可能会对工作职能和就业产生巨大的冲击，”该报告总结称。