Oisin Breen

Looks like there isn’t a limit to pivots. Glad basketball rules don’t apply to wealth advisory.

Interesting move - I'll be watching...but I think they're missing the opportunity in re-thinking the industry from an individual investor's perspective.  The main reason Betterment &amp; Wealthfront haven't captivated the  middle market to the extent they could have is that the middle market has most of their investments within their 401(k) plans - it's the middle market's first exposure to investing.

Selling 401(k) plans is and interesting, but overly crowded space.  Providing advise across any plan is where one needs to head in order to see defensible long-term growth.  If you can't provide advice on 70% of the middle market's liquid wealth, how valuable is a robo-advisor for the other 30%?  (hint: Not very.)

Betterment  is ready to burn cash like its 2008 all over again with 2008 co-founder Eli Broverman leading a $60-million VC round to execute the plan he was credited with creating

Betterment

Stripped down to its essentials, financial advice is a fairly straightforward proposition. Done well, a highly ethical individual stewards the assets and actions of an investor in a personal and professional interchange.
 
But now a vibrant new class of entrepreneurs is staking their fates and their fortunes on the premise that financial advice can be delivered in a better, cheaper, easier, more ethical, more transparent manner and, as a bonus, in a way more devoid of human annoyance on both ends of the transaction.
 
Cue the robo-advisors, arguably a callous misnomer for automated asset management. 
 
The prototypical robo-advisory entrepreneur has more brands on his or her resume than NASCAR. The bona fides of these industry upstarts often include Ivy-level colleges and MBA programs at Harvard or Stanford. They are often flush with IPO dollars realized at concerns like LinkedIn, Facebook, eBay, Amazon  and Microsoft. 
 
Robo-folk believe that technology is not an enabler of advice but rather, if engineered correctly, advice itself in digital form. 
 
And, they believe the best solutions originate in Silicon Valley or academia, not Wall Street. Robo-entrepreneurs are white-boarding the whole business model, culture and technology from scratch in the conviction that little can be learned from a legacy advice system still rooted in an investment banking culture acting under the core premise that if stockbrokers get rich some of the good effects will trickle down to clients – with the clients none the wiser. 
 
Robo-advisors are a scintillating topic for students of the advice game as they grow by hundreds of millions in assets every month, constantly evolve their business models and receive cash infusions from ever-larger swaths of venture capitals.
 
Throw in the fact that robo-advisors have yet to see a dime in profits -- and won’t in the foreseeable future -- and you have real intrigue. 
 
RIABiz has avidly covered the fast-evolving robo-advice phenomenon and will continue to do so. We present the growing body of articles here.

Robo-Advisors

<p>The RIA business has many tech vendors working hard to serve its diverse needs, and we're seeing technology become a more crucial part of setting up and running an RIA than ever before.</p>

<p>The Technology section includes unbiased tech reviews, tech-related news, and coverage of tech-related conferences.</p>

Technology

The  13-year-old New York City startup is one year into a rebirth under new CEO Sarah Levy who is hiring like crazy and plans to invest aggressively in both B2B units -- for 401(k) and RIA custody.

Betterment is ready to burn cash like its 2008 all over again with 2008 co-founder Eli Broverman leading a $60-million VC round to execute the plan he was credited with creating

Jeff Spears

Brian Murphy

Related Moves

January 19, 2021 at 6:32 PM

December 8, 2020 at 5:27 PM

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