Betterment has increased its assets under management (AUM) by approximately $1 billion in eight months; AUM is currently $6.2 billion; diversification to new client segments has significantly helped the firm to grow; beginning as a consumer focused platform, it now has a Betterment for Business platform with approximately 300 customers; the early expansion to businesses primarily underserved by legacy providers is likely to be an advantage for the firm as robo advisor offerings increase. Source
PeerStreet has partnered with Betterment to provide increased access to its platform data for investors through the Betterment service; with the new partnership investors can now view their PeerStreet positions on the Betterment dashboard; the partnership is facilitated by data integration from Quovo. Source
Through the partnership, the firm hopes to provide more personalization to their over 270,000 users; both portfolios were vetted by Betterment to ensure quality and affordability standards; Dan Egan, director of behavioral finance investments at Betterment stated, “We wanted to get these strategies out to our clients as quickly as possible, rather than build them out ourselves.” Source
Building off of the $70mn funding round from the summer Betterment is now reportedly worth $1bn; the $1bn mark is significant as it denotes that a company is considered a unicorn; the valuation makes Betterment the first robo advisor to reach unicorn status; the company currently has over $11bn in assets under management. Source.
Forbes is reporting that Betterment is looking to take on one of the core offerings of banks: the checking account;...
Betterment has announced a new service that will offer professional advice from certified financial planners for an additional fee; the firm has structured the new service in two tiers providing for annual and unlimited advice; the annual access will be charged an additional 40 basis points with a minimum investment required of $100,000; the unlimited access will charge 50 basis points and require a minimum of $250,000; the new offering will target high net worth clients however the company will continue to maintain its $0 minimum investment; it is expected that robo adviser services will evolve to a hybrid model providing both automated and human services; Vanguard and Schwab offer a hybrid model with human advice available by phone or video chat. Source
Jon Stein first looks to the past of investing in stocks with significant milestones such as the introduction of index funds, trade automation and decreasing trading costs leading to the ability to be easily diversified; thus old models of charging people to trade or to be diversified don't work; looking at the current and future trends Jon discusses that investors are now more responsible than ever for their own retirement and need advice; Jon Stein shares how Betterment is providing financial advice to more people; the company manages over $8 billion in assets and has 240,000 customers. Source
Schwab Intelligent Portfolios now boasts $24 billion assets under management and has hired Cynthia Loh, the ex-general manager of Betterment for Business; article reports on Schwab’s robo-advice platform growth, the cannibalization the firm saw with the offering, and what the new hire might mean for Schwab’s future plans. Source
Betterment is looking to cater to their wealthier clients as they make portfolios more personalized; they launched the Betterment Flexible Portfolio which allows customers to shoes how assets weights are allocated; the typical Betterment client uses the asset weights set by the robo advisor, but this feature is meant to personalize the wealth clients portfolio; the move will try to help the company to position themselves as a full service firm that can cater to different levels of clientele, not just the younger investor. Source.
We are like the hungry at the all-you-can-eat buffet. In the beginning, there is not enough! Let's democratize access to food; to music; to transportation; to healthcare; to finance; to payments; to banking; to lending; to investing. The billions in institutional capital across universities, pensions, and sovereigns are delegated to smart portfolio managers. The day before yesterday, it was allocated by small cap stock pickers (hi Warren!). Yesterday, it was the alternative managers of hedge funds and private equity. Today, it is the trading machine and the venture capitalist. Tomorrow, it is the cryptographic artificial intelligence.