Banque Cramer is getting in on the fintech wave: the Geneva-based private bank is launching a stock screening app based on its investment expertise, finews.com has learned.
The private bank is launching Prime Selector, a stock-picker which allows users to set a series of criteria on companies as well as to draw on Cramer’s investment research and ratings to set up portfolios.
The tool can backtest what users’ strategies would have done in the last ten years, tracking performance, volatility, growth and best and worst monthly returns.
«Our tool allows you not just to select stocks and see how they are rated, but our intention is also to show how the factors selected would have performed historically with a backtesting function,» Chief Investment Officer Placido Albanese told finews.com.
No Subscription Fee
Banque Cramer is making the tool publicly accessible without a subscription fee. The move is a surprisingly offensive one for private banking, where expertise is generally carefully guarded from purview.
The bank uses the technology behind the app internally and the bank's impetus to make the tool public isn't a purely economic one – at least not directly.
«We believe that it shows a certain know-how and that a small or mid-sized private bank is in a position to achieve something that’s usually attributed to larger players or to fintech,» Albanese said.
The product fulfills a similar function to tools on the market including Finviz’s screener.com or stockopedia.com, which is subscription-based and includes a community forum.
By contrast, Cramer’s Prime Selector is purely the technical stock-focused app for selecting stocks and backtesting portfolios. The app draws on Cramer’s investment recommendations, which rates stocks on a scale of zero to five unicorns – the bank’s motif.
Cramer Brand
The app's criteria are also targeted towards a more sophisticated stock-picker than a typical retail client, with variants on key factors like growth, value and quality that are aimed towards financially savvy investors. Investors can for example activate a hedge overlay function when backtesting their strategy.
Making the tool publicly accessible comes at virtually no cost to the private bank, Albanese said. Equally, Cramer isn't immediately looking for a way to make money out of Prime Selector, which was written by financial software firm InCube.
«For us, this is initially about brand awareness,» he said.
Cramer has grown quickly by acquisition in recent years, snapping up Lausanne-based Banque de Depots et de Gestion three years ago and Valartis Group in 2014.
Cramer belongs to Norinvest, a holding company.
