Ramya Joseph's Pefin: Using AI to provide fiduciary financial advice to customers

Ramya Joseph Co-founder, Pefin  Image: Alex Flynn/Bloomberg Via Getty Images

Ramya Joseph’s entry into the world of artificial intelligence (AI) came largely from a personal setback. Her father, who was due to retire in 2008, found himself out of work as the global recession wreaked havoc across the financial world. Joseph, who holds graduate degrees in computer science and financial engineering from Columbia University, stepped in to help her father, but soon realised the immense opportunity in financial planning, using AI.

Thus was born Pefin, touted as the world’s first AI financial advisor in 2011 in New York. The company claims to use AI to provide intelligent, fiduciary financial advice at a fraction of a cost of a traditional financial advisor. Pefin, using its neural network, tracks changes in a user’s spending patterns, account balance, markets and risk exposure and inflation and cost of living expenses to advice its clients.

Before she founded Pefin, Joseph had studied computer science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, prior to going on to work with IBM. After graduating from Columbia, Joseph worked with Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs as vice president before launching Pefin.

Since then, Joseph has also taken on the role of the head of project for the Bridge Project, a non-profit serving low-income mothers through guaranteed income programmes across the US. At Bridge, Joseph is responsible for creating a full technology platform for automation, fraud prevention and scale.

“Pefin was born out of a recognition that something had to change in the way financial advice was being delivered to people,” Joseph said in 2017.