By FINTECH Books Contributor, Mirko Ulbrich Tech enabled wealth management is currently driven by passive investment strategies as products and ETF as assets classes. The big WealthTECH players like Betterment or Wealthfront have high burn rates from a couple of million Euro a week? And taken a high validation of $700 million from Betterment they will probably not be able to become profitable? They serve the low end of the market with small customers with a lower profit margin. In addition the year 2017 will be different due to the change in the trend in interest markets and due to a change in political directions by the new US president the steady gains in the stock markets from 2009 to 2016 will go flat. The market will see more volatility and stock pickers and specific sectors will outperform the market. Customers will turn away from the big players if they do not see their profits increase anymore. Innovative wealth managers like samt.ag will understand the end of the passive hype and offer traditional hedge fund strategies as additional components to the passive portfolio, for example strategies like “value investing”, “sector rotation”, “Distressed Securities” or even “commodity trading” for a higher management fee. On the other hand will active managed mutual funds decrease their fees to stop the money outflow? Small innovative wealth managers and highly efficient active managed mutual funds with much lower fees will see a revival from 2017.