All About Our Multi-Year Partnership With AI4Good Lab

December 1, 2021

Announcing Mako Fintech’s Multi-Year Partnership with the AI4Good Lab

Mako Fintech has launched a multi-year partnership, sponsoring the AI4Good Lab program. The partnership allows Mako to share available positions across the lab’s talented alumni network through newsletters, participation in career fairs, and involvement in Demo Day - the program’s annual capstone event. Through these initiatives, Mako has been actively attracting talent from their organization for job postings like the Solutions Engineer position. AI4Good Lab alumna, Ayesha Liaqat, started in this position and has already been promoted to Manager at Mako Fintech.

The AI4Good Lab targets young women from across Canada to attend a highly-coveted 7-week summer training program on artificial intelligence research and product development. Mako proudly supports their mission to offer AI mentorship, career development, and training to under-represented individuals. Participants of the program learn how to use AI for social good, and it accepts only 12-25% of applicants annually during their call for applications that run from January 15th to February 15th.

Spotlight: Ayesha Liaqat, Solutions Engineering Manager, AI4Good Lab Alumni

Mako Fintech seeks to attract talented, young individuals who have experience with data science, computer science, math, physics or engineering. The AI4Good Lab program nurtures exactly this type of talent, and so the partnership was a natural fit for both organizations. Maya Marcus-Sells, Executive Director of the Lab, says she’s pleased but not surprised to see graduates of the program being selected for employment opportunities so readily, given the demand for talented individuals from diverse backgrounds who have the critical skills required to drive the data revolution.

Ayesha is a bright young woman that Mako is lucky to have working on their team, who recently graduated from the lab. She joined Mako before being accepted into the AI4Good Lab program. Understanding her passion for AI development, the Mako team was thrilled to learn that Ayesha would be leaving us for a short period of time to join the Lab’s latest cohort. Ayesha says:

“The AI4Good Lab program was a transformative experience that has equipped me with the skills to work in the field immediately. It was a pleasure to work alongside talented young women to develop an AI application that informs and encourages sustainable choices. Throughout the program, I was inspired by the potential of AI to contribute to social good.

“In addition to learning how to write AI models and gaining technical skills, I also value the mentorship opportunities provided throughout the program. The AI4Good Lab connected us with strong female role models who provided us with valuable insight on the role of women in tech and mentored us on navigating the challenges. I am extremely grateful for the support throughout the program and am excited to be bringing the skills to my new role at Mako.”

After completing the program this past summer, Ayesha was promoted to Solutions Engineering Manager, and Mako realized how important a formal relationship between the two organizations could be.

Attracting the right type of talent is critical to Mako’s success. The Lab helps its sponsors address the pipeline issue of increasing diversity on their teams, by providing access to their alumni community of trained and motivated women. Meanwhile, young graduates from across the country are able to benefit from the ongoing remote employment opportunities that Mako offers.

The Future is Bright

The AI4Good multi-year partnership has been a complete success for both Mako and the program so far. While Mako is only seeing the early benefits of this partnership, we’re hoping to continue to attract bright minds like Ayesha for open positions in the next few years. The AI4Good Lab will begin accepting applications for next year’s program on January 15th, 2022. Future graduates of the program should keep an eye out for career opportunities with Mako Fintech because the partnership is showing no signs of slowing.

Image Credits

Feature Image: Custom Graphic Via Mako Fintech

Image 1: Via AI4Good Instagram

Image 2: Via AI4Good Website

Technology and Efficiency in Wealth Management

View full Infographic

So in my view an appropriately diversified portfolio should have enough exposure to different asset classes, that its able to withstand a wide range of market disruptions. Usually, it’s some kind of negative or positive event… they’ll affect different asset classes differently. So by having your eggs in different baskets you’ll be well insulated from major risk. For example, there’s some kind of change in the housing market… both by having some exposure to it, you won’t miss out on the opportunity to make money. But if it’s something negative, you’re also not going to lose all your money if all of it were in the housing market for example. So at a high level, a properly diversified portfolio should grow in a growing market and yet not be at risk of major losses in a declining market.
‍
You asked also about an efficiently diversified portfolio, and I would say that that’s a portfolio that achieves those goals with a minimum of different positions. There’s a lot of good reasons to have fewer positions in your portfolio. Being less complex means a portfolio is easier to rebalance and administer. Every time part of your portfolio goes up or down, you're going to need to rebalance it a little to make sure that it stays with the right allocations and the fewer positions you have, the easier it is to do that..the less trading fees you incur doing that.
‍
There is a tradeoff between being completely diversified and being efficiently diversified. If you were completely diversified then you’d have a proportional segment of absolutely everything you could invest in under the sun, like shares of palm oil futures or something like that. I don’t think everyone should have palm oil futures in their portfolio but I’m not a wealth manager. I think it comes down to your portfolio and how large it is (probably the Canada Pension Plan has a proportion of palm oil futures in it). You’re going to have to talk to your advisor and choose a degree of complexity that’s right for your portfolio.
‍
CN: Let’s just take a step back - what does a typical portfolio look like and has that changed over time?
‍
RB: Yeah, so I'm not entirely sure what a typical portfolio looks like these days because it's actually changed quite a lot over time. I think common wisdom used to be that the classic balanced portfolio was 60% public stocks and 40% bonds. These days that's ancient history. Most would say that the bond allocation should be a lot lower these days in this age of unprecedented low-interest rates. These days it’s the stock portfolio that’s been driving a lot of the growth. I think a well-diversified portfolio in the modern era should absolutely include exposure to all kinds of alternative assets (that aren't even really that alternative but still kind of fall out of that traditional bucket). So you know I mentioned real estate, private companies, maybe for example commodities or other types of investments. So I think that there are a lot of things that you can invest in and your advisor can guide you on what’s appropriate for you.
‍
CN: Yeah that makes a lot of sense. Talking about alternative investments, we’ve heard a lot this year about ESGs, impact investing, alternative investments… do you think there’s more of an appetite today for these types of investments than in the last ten years?
‍
RB: Yeah that’s a topic that’s close to my heart having previously started an impact investment company. It’s definitely been a gigantic increase in interest. I think when I started my previous company we were speaking to large wealth managers and having them say “we’re barely getting a grip on early ideas.” Like not including gun manufacturers or tobacco companies, and now these same companies are launching impact portfolios and marketing this aggressively. So there’s definitely been a seat change, it’s a real industry, and there’s a lot of studies out there and data showing that ESG or impact investing can equal or outperform non-impact investments. So I think it’s a huge part of the market these days. That said, one of the things that’s driving it is people’s interest in it. I think that one of the stories of the investment industry has been the personalization of it. People’s portfolios are being tailored to their own needs and circumstances. Impact investing is definitely a piece of that. People are environmentalists, but an institution is not an environmentalist. It doesn’t live and breathe the impact on the environment the way an individual does. The person who is active in the David Suzuki Foundation for example is going to be active as an impact investor and it’s appropriate for them to be.

In Pursuit of Efficiency:

Working with Technology to De-paper Wealth Management Processes

Download Complete eBook

That’s a great question. I think there's a lot of advantages and you gain a lot with an automated platform. For me, it's a lot easier to manage. I have some of my money in one of these platforms and I barely think about it. It's being rebalanced all the time. The costs are much lower in terms of expense ratio for the same kind of rebalancing. Again you're missing a lot with that, but on just the mechanical portfolio rebalancing you're getting a great deal there. I would say that two other advantages are up-to-the-minute reporting, so you always have that login where you can see your position, see how your portfolio is doing historically. And finally, this is an advantage for me and anyone who doesn't love doing taxes, but typically they’ll take care of your tax forms for you, and end up with much simpler tax forms, so it kind of works out what your cost basis was and how much you have to report.
‍
CN: So let's talk about the other side of the coin then...what are the risks of not having a seasoned professional managing your money?
‍
RB: I wouldn’t exactly phrase the question that way. You know it's more what’s the benefits of having a real wealth manager? Some of the clients of robo advisory firms may not even be aware that they're missing out. A wealth manager isn't just balancing your stocks and bonds, that's kind of the very lowest mechanical level of what you get out of the wealth manager. Really they're your advisor on your life. Intimately intertwined with you because you're thinking about retirement planning, on planning for college for your kids, when is the right time to buy a house, and when should you get life insurance, for example. An advisor can help you with all of those decisions and they can connect you with service providers like a mortgage broker when you may be in need of one. So I think that you get a lot of value out of having one of these advisers, particularly when you get to a stage in life when these kinds of services are more about the long-term and your life circumstances are far more critical.
‍
CN: There are clearly pros and cons and two sides of the story depending on who you're asking. Like you said, what stage of their life they’re in ...but do you think the platforms that we’re seeing emerging like to Qtrade, Wealthsimple, and all the rest will ever become status quo?
‍
RB: Yeah, I do actually. I think that similarly to how you know we’re using online platforms to automate everything for us (I can’t think of the last time I used to travel for example), everything you’re going to be trying to do with your money is going to be automated, and it’s going to be appropriate to be handled by one of these one of these platforms. In particular, for most people at an early stage in their lives that have few assets to manage, not a lot of complexity, not a very extended personal family circumstance, it’s gonna make a lot of sense to have a low fee robo worry about it. But at some point their life circumstances are going to get more complex and you’re gonna get married, or maybe you’re not, or you may have other objectives that you may want some advice on and at that point it may make sense to either supplement the robo advisory portion of your portfolio, or graduate to a more holistic wealth management view.
‍
CN: Thank you so much Raph, these answers were great. It’s always insightful chatting with you so thanks for sharing those answers with us today.
‍
RB: It’s my pleasure.

Author: Chandal Nolasco da Silva

Chandal is Mako's VP of Marketing & Communications. She is a dedicated leader who has spent a decade creating recognized B2B SaaS content marketing and SEO campaigns.

View Posts