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www.Personal_Asset_Allocation

Dipartimento di Scienze Statistiche e Matematiche "Silvio Vianelli," Facoltà di Economia, Università di Palermo, Viale delle Scienze, 90128 Palermo, Italy
Prometeia S.r.l., Via Marconi 43, 40122 Bologna, Italy
Department of Public and Business Administration, University of Cyprus, PO Box 20537, CY-1678, Nicosia, Cyprus, and the Financial Institutions Center, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104
consiglio{at}unipa.it
flavio.cocco{at}prometeia.it
zenioss{at}ucy.ac.cy

Today consumers demand delivery of financial services anytime and anywhere, and their needs and desires are evolving rapidly. The World Wide Web provides a rich channel for distributing customized services to a range of clients. An Internet-based system developed by Prometeia S.r.l. for Italian banks—both traditional and e-banks—supports consumers and financial advisors in planning personal finances. The system provides advice on allocating personal assets to fund consumers' needs, such as paying for a house, children's education, retirement, or other projects. State-of-the-art models of financial engineering—based on scenario optimization—develop plans that are consistent with clients' goals, their attitudes towards risk, and the prevailing views on market performance. The system then helps clients to select off-the-shelf financial products, such as mutual funds, to create customized portfolios. Finally, it analyzes the risk of portfolios in terms that are intuitive for laypersons and monitors their performance in achieving the target goals. Four major banks use the system to support their networks of several thousand financial advisors and to reach tens of thousands of clients directly.

Key Words: finance; investment; financial institutions; banks