Aviva Shwaid, CFA
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

• Currently manager, insights and research, with Google Canada
• CFA Charterholder, member of CFA Society Toronto
• Graduate of University of Manitoba
• MBA, Stern School of Business at New York University
• Past Vice President / Securities Analyst at Dreman Value Management
• Past Economic Research Analyst at Richard Bernstein Advisors

How has the CFA designation and the knowledge you have gained through completing the program helped you in your career? What about your MBA?

The education and technical skills that I gained from the CFA designation gave me a detailed understanding of securities analysis, financial accounting, economics, and statistics. In addition to technical prowess, the CFA designation has global recognition that gave me “street cred” during my early days as an analyst in New York, where University of Manitoba, my undergraduate alma mater, is not well known.

The NYU Stern MBA program gave me exposure to a broader range of business topics (energy and the environment, negotiations, change management, managing small businesses, among others), but some of the things I found most valuable about my MBA are more practical in nature. While at NYU, we spent a considerable amount of time focusing on resumé writing, interviewing, and presentation skills. I think these skills are often underestimated but are truly invaluable. The MBA program also afforded me the opportunity to be part of an inspired and driven community. Professors and classmates alike were working on passion projects, building businesses, and developing thought leadership. It was a privilege to attend school with such a vibrant group. I am still in touch with many of my classmates from the program, and on a monthly basis, I participate in a Google Hangout (group video chat) with about 10 Google employees who all graduated from NYU in my year. We reside in places across the globe (New York, France, Toronto, and California) and sit in a variety of departments such as people operations, finance, business development, sales, and strategy.

What driving forces have made your career evolve in such a unique way? How did you end up working at Google?

My role at Google and the work of an investment analyst are more similar than they might appear at first glance. Investment analysts use company, economic, and market data to inform investment decisions. At Google, we navigate through large data sets as well: aggregate search trends, digital media consumption, and online consumer behaviour, just to name a few. Part of my role at Google is to analyze these data and understand how these trends impact Canadian businesses in real time. At Google Canada, my team partners with some of Canada’s most pre-eminent brands to help them uncover insights that enable better business decisions. Essentially, it was a natural evolution. The skills in both roles are largely the same. I am still an analyst—just of internet data instead of market data!

As a CFA charterholder and the insights and research manager for Google, why do you think the investment community should care about what’s happening online?

The investment community should care about what’s happening online because what is being said online is impacting everything from public opinion to consumer behaviour to share prices. Companies interface with their customers online every day through e-commerce, customer service, and social channels. The ones that are doing digital well and are increasing their market share and improving their bottom line. E-commerce is often more efficient than traditional channels, so online conversions are even more valuable in that case. Companies that are doing well online are improving profits for their organizations, which will ultimately impact share price.

Just as an equity analyst would conduct store or factory visits to understand foot traffic, operational efficiencies, and inventory management, there are now a host of metrics and insights that can be gleaned from the online world: search volume relative to competition, website visitors as a complement to foot traffic, and social presence (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) as a measure of customer engagement and service—these are just a few indicators of success.

What are the benefits in investing with a digitally savvy company?

There are two major benefits. The first is obvious: Consumers are online, so businesses need to be there too. In my opinion, part of the due diligence process while researching an investment should include an assessment of the company’s online presence. A good place to start is with a simple search. Does the company come up first, or do their competitors show up first? About a one third of users click on the first link they see on a search results page, thereby creating an opportunity for a digital-savvy company to drive traffic to their own site simply by being present when users are searching for them. Checking whether a company is present on terms for categories, products, and brands that consumers would likely be searching for is a quick way to evaluate if a company is being proactive in communicating with consumers that are looking for them. By the fall of 2015, we expect to see 50% of all Google searches in Canada take place on mobile devices. If you’ve invested in a company that doesn’t have a mobile-optimized site, you are basically investing in a company that is closed 50 percent of the time.

The second reason is a bit less obvious. Digital offers opportunities for a business to understand its consumer, industry, and market in real time in a way that was not possible even a few years ago.

The tech industry refers to this as “big data.” We are seeing a shift in which both organizations and the average person have access to massive amounts of data. But there’s still a gap between a desire to use that data to inform personal and business decisions and the ability to access, manage, analyze, and interpret data practically. Part of my role is to make the ever-growing troves of data truly accessible and actually useful. The companies that aren’t investing in these opportunities are missing out—and will fall behind.

What tools would you recommend an investor use to monitor social media and measure how digitally wise a company is?

At Google, we often talk about our search engine as “the database of intentions” because aggregate searches provide clues to users’ purchase intentions, interests, and future actions. Google offers many publicly available tools that use real-time user search data to help us predict the present. My favourite tool is Google Trends, which can be particularly helpful to equity and economic analysts. This tool monitors search-term growth in real time, helping you to understand both macro and seasonal trends.

This type of data can be useful for predicting economic series. For example, searches for “home inspection” and “home appraisals” were found to correlate to new home sales data in the U.S. Another useful tool is competitive data in equity research. Search data can provide insights into consumer interest and brand favourability during key seasons, such as holidays. One could compare searches for one brand over another, monitor these changes over time, and explore how they differ by geography.

For an equity analyst, particularly in the consumer staples and consumer discretionary sectors, this data can also be used to identify fast-rising topics and spot new opportunities. By filtering to Google Shopping searches, and selecting “rising queries,” one can see that over the past 30 days, Watch Dogs, a video game manufactured by Ubisoft, is the fastest-rising query on Google Shopping worldwide. My guess is that search interest on Google Shopping is a leading indicator of purchase intent. A shrewd analyst could back-test this theory with real revenue data and use real-time search trends data as an input for a quarterly forecasting model.

Do you have advice for financial services companies in terms of maximizing their brand online?

Financial services companies that are looking to maximize their brand online should be thinking about having a consistent brand experience across all screens (TV, mobile, desktop, and tablet). For complex products, such as financial services products, we often see a considerable amount of consumer research conducted online before purchase. A recent study by Millward Brown Digital and Google Canada found that 60 percent of auto insurance shoppers will look for information online before visiting a broker. Having a strong search presence is essential to driving potential customers both to your website and to your branch location.

Mobile offers a unique opportunity for a financial services firm to elevate the degree of convenience, service, and access it provides to its customers. Seventy-five percent of mobile phone owners in Canada now use a smart phone (comScore, Mobi-Lens, December 2013), and this percentage is on the rise. This means that a growing number of Canadians are connected to the internet 24/7. Financial firms that are creating a seamless experience on mobile are setting themselves apart from the competition. Tangerine Bank, formerly known as ING Bank of Canada, recently rebranded through a digital campaign called #forwardbanking. In conjunction with public relations they launched a mobile app that allows a customer to deposit a cheque by simply taking a picture of it. This may seem like a marketing ploy, but the ability to deposit a cheque without visiting a branch or ATM has yet to be adopted by all Canadian banks. I think it’s an innovation that will lead to increased customer satisfaction and market share growth, turning #forwardbanking into #shareholdervalue.

Finally, I think there might be a misconception in the financial community that online video and YouTube are just for cat videos! In fact, people often turn to YouTube to be educated. The unique audience for “how-to” videos is growing at a double-digit clip year over year. Financial services companies that are leading in digital branding are providing utility for their customers by creating a hub for video content that is both educational and engaging. The industry is uniquely positioned to create meaningful communities around topics such as real estate, personal financial planning, and investing.

Can you share some of the best advice you have received in your career?

Prior to joining Google, I heard Marissa Mayer (Google’s first female Engineer) lecture at the 92nd Street Y in New York. She offered a lot of great advice for women in business, leadership, and technology. She talked about how the technology is changing so quickly that if you are thinking of joining from another industry, you are only as far behind as the most recent development. She gave me the confidence to enter a field I had essentially zero experience in! Her words were true—many of the products that existed when I joined Google have already changed dramatically.