This is the exact speech of Mr Kelvin Helius – president of the famous “Galactic Academy of Wealth Management” – welcoming the 2058 class of students.

Dear Students, dear distinguished human and robotic scholars of wealth management, let me please warmly welcome you to the famous “Galactic Academy of Wealth Management”, the number one school and think-tank of Wealth Management Technology in our beloved galaxy.

Your distinguished class, the class of 2058, is different and highly significant. This is the class starting its ambitious and challenging studies in wealth management exactly 50 years after the beginning of the GCTFS, the Great Crisis of Traditional Financial Services. The fearful GCTFS erupted back on planet Earth in the late year of 2008.

Looking back to 2008, now, 50 years later we have to conclude with a high degree of certainty that that was the point of transformation, the igniting force of the great digital revolution in finance. The 2008 crisis first awakened forces such as FinTech – the thousands of digital start-ups challenging the pre-crisis status quo of long outdated mammoths in all branches of financial services. Later, FinTech evolved into more specific and specialized categories of digital financial services, sub-areas such as WealthTech, InsurTech, RegTech, RiskTech, ComplianceTech, PayTech, IdentityTech, TradeTech and more have emerged. This is how our beautiful discipline of WealthTech was born.

Let me please proudly say that our prestigious institution, your future alma mater, the “Galactic Academy of Wealth Management” is famous for its progressive, precise and highly thoughtful curriculum of WealthTech.

Dear class of 2058, during the forthcoming two years of your intensive studies, your focus of interest and your anchor of activity will revolve around our renowned curriculum of “The 10 Pillars of WealthTech”. You will spend long days and months learning, analysing and practising these 10 distinguished disciplines, the 10 pillars of modern WealthTech. Let me therefore please list these 10 pillars – the key building blocks of your years of study – and give brief explanations of them!

• Wealth hibernation: As you very well know, about 50% of our population chooses cryo-death,¹ so they hibernate themselves as the end of their life is approaching. We have also had the first successful cases of reanimation, when people with previously incurable diseases have now been unfrozen and treated successfully afterwards. This brought the question of “wealth hibernation and reverse inheritance” into the focus of wealth management firms. You will learn how your future clients will have to be offered a choice between (1) wealth hibernation: while they are hibernated, their wealth is managed on a discretionary basis by long-term robo-algorithms or (2) reverse inheritance: while they are hibernated, their children and grandchildren inherit their wealth, but when they are reanimated, a so-called “reverse inheritance” process has to occur, when the reanimated parent or grandparent takes their fortune back from their children and grandchildren. The first product – wealth hibernation – is a perfect cross-sell product for “reanimation insurance” while the second product – reverse inheritance – has to be complemented by offering insurance for the descendants in case their ancestor is reanimated and takes his or her fortune back.
• Ex-forex: As you become world-class wealth managers, it is paramount to understand the past. You will have to learn about currencies. Currencies existed for thousands of years before they recently went extinct in the 2040s, being replaced by the GalactoDollar. The concept of a galaxy-wide currency is quite a new one. In the past, more than 150 different currencies existed. There were so-called “currency traders”, making profits by utilizing the volatility of “forex rates”. In the 2040s the GalactoDollar gradually took over and now, as you very well know, this is the sole legal tender in our galaxy. The Galactic Central Bank (GCB) maintains monetary policy, keeping long-term interest rates at around 3%. Before we immerse ourselves too much in current monetary matters, I would like to mention that back in the early 2000s it was not only the over 150 different denominations circulating on planet Earth, but there used also to be “cash”. Cash was money printed on paper or minted into metal coins. Dear young students… I know it is very hard to imagine why and how these millions of papers and coins were circulating, but believe me: it all did once exist.
• Astrocommodities: As humanity and machines have widened their living beyond planet Earth, new commodities have emerged. Looking at you, my young students, I can very well imagine that you have hardly heard of such exotic things as oil, natural gas, gold, copper or silver. Yet, they used to be at the centre of commodities trading. Our curriculum is modern and so therefore instead of these outdated commodities, you will learn about the new ones such as antimatter, stardust, gamma rays, asteroid soil, comet debris and meteor rock. We will also mention some more advanced neo-commodities, such as black hole extract and interstellar turf.
• Law of robots: As I am looking at you, my dear students, it is clear that now over 30% of freshmen at our distinguished academy of wealth management are robots. You very well know that humans and robots are now equally important clients as well as wealth managers, cooperating and competing. The “law of robots” is an absolutely essential discipline. We will learn about such things as co-bots (humans and machines working very closely together), robo-ethics (how and when robots can have their own assets, their own wealth and how robots can handle inheritance among themselves), robo-liability (when a robo-trader makes a mistake, who is liable and to what extent), robo-payroll (how much a robot should earn, how robo-salaries are set).
• Transhumanist trading techniques: Transhumanism – as you very well know – is the physical and mental combination of humans and machines. 50 years ago it would have been unimaginable for people that our brains are now just downloaded to the cloud and so our memories are recorded and stored. One of the progressive trends in wealth management is to combine our downloaded knowledge with robo-algorithms. Transhumanist trading techniques combine the advantages of imprecise, yet highly emotional humans and precise, yet unemotional machines.
• Holoconsulting: In 1894 people invented something called the “radio”. This was only able to transmit voice. Later, in 1925 they built their first “televisions”. These were machines that could transmit two-dimensional black and white pictures. In 1953 came televisions with two-dimensional colour pictures. Why did we have to wait till 2020 for the first really good holoprojectors to appear? I mean, it is so trivial that three-dimensional colour picture and sound have to be transmitted in order for people to be able to efficiently and realistically communicate… anyway. Now that our holoprojectors are transmitting real-life-compatible, lifesize three-dimensional images so easily, it is very important to learn how to holoconsult clients in a polite, yet efficient way. For example, you never project yourself into the house of a client without permission.
• The virtual reality portfolio rollercoaster: Clients have always had difficulties understanding the true meaning of volatility – the big ups and downs in asset prices, throughout different asset classes. Therefore, wealth management firms offer the “virtual reality portfolio rollercoaster”. You put virtual reality glasses on the client and upload the price performance of an asset or portfolio. The software translates the price history into a rollercoaster ride and plays it on the virtual reality glasses. In this way, the client can really get a tangible feel of the given volatility – the size of ups and downs – and the bumpiness and nature of the price history.
• Eye retina trading: Traders used to have so-called “traders’ screens”. These were multiple physical screens in front of asset traders. This was inconvenient, and they could only have a maximum of five or six screens packed onto their tables. Now, traders work with the “eye retina trading” technique. They put in electric contact lenses – as you know, the electricity comes from their own bodies – and see whatever screen they want in front of them. By blinking and focusing on certain places, they can click and zoom and highlight things.
• Comprehensive internet reader robots: Back in the 2010s there were about 2 million news articles published on the internet per day. Now this number is much higher, about 10 million news articles per day. In our galaxy, we are currently using about 600 languages (100 human and 500 machine languages). This is why wealth management firms have developed “comprehensive internet reader robots”. These robots read all the news articles published and analyse them, by natural – and machine – language processing, to come up with daily sentiment calculations for each company traded. This daily news sentiment analysis put together provides a sentiment history. The daily sentiment numbers and sentiment histories are beautifully visualized on three-dimensional gauges.
• Human biosentiment sensors: For hundreds of years of the stock market, people have been talking about “the sentiment of the market”. They could conclude that “the market is nervous”, “the market is depressed” or “the market is euphoric”. As if the market was a human being. Now we already have the technology to truly measure market sentiment. This is why we put biosensors on every trader and analyst. We measure their blood pressure, their heart beat, their respiration and much more. This data – through an internet of things mechanism – is centralized galaxy-wide and therefore we have a true biologically measured market sentiment aggregation.

Dear class of 2058: as you see from the 10 pillars of our curriculum, we are living in exciting times. Let me please express my happiness and appreciation at seeing you here as the new incoming class of our beloved “Galactic Academy of Wealth Management”. Let me please say to you loud and clear: WELCOME! Welcome to the new world of WealthTech!