Extended list of United States firms that could loosely be categorized as Robo-Advisors*
- AAA (story at RIABiz) via FinanceLogix
- Acorns Advisers, LLC
- Advizr (provider to advisors)
- Amerivest Portfolios (Custodian) per FP (6/11/2015) plans a Robo offering, offers irebal and has multiple deals with other firms (7/3/2015 RIABiz update).
- AssetBuilder
- Autopilot (CLS Investments/Riskalize - commentary - $90B on platform)
- Betterment
- Blooom (401K advisor)
- Blueleaf
- CapitalOneInvesting (story)
- CircleBlack (
BloombergBlack)
- Covestor (subscription)
- Edelman Online (discussion)
- Ellevest - Ellevate RIABiz Story
- E*Trade Online Managed Investment Portfolio
- evisor
- Fidelity (Custodian) (deals with Betterment and Learnvest and may offer own version)
- Financial Engines (usually via plan sponsor)
- FinanceLogix (story at RIABiz)
- FlexScore
- FolioDynamix (Actua technology solutions)
- FolioInvesting (subscription)
- FTJ FundChoice’s Market Movement Strategies
- FutureAdvisor (subscription)
- Guided Choice (via plan sponsor)
- Hedgeable
- Index Fund Advisors (RIA with robo features)
- Invessence
- iQuantifi
- Jemstep (subscription) ($15M VC)
- Kivalia
- LearnVest.com (subscription)
- Marketriders (subscription)
- Marstone (coming soon)
- Morningstar Associates
- MotifInvesting
- MyMoneyGuide
- MyPlanIQ.com (Email subscription)
- MyVest.com (first offered online advice then "morphed into a TAMP-like platform focused on serving financial advisors")
- NestEgg Wealth
Nestwise.com, previously Veritat Advisors
- Nextcapital ("administering $25 billion" free and premium portfolio tools)
- PersonalCapital
- Plan and Act (subscription)
- ProManage LLC (via plan sponsor)
- Quovo (platform for financial professionals) (VC)
- Rebalance IRA
- RightCapital
- RiXtrema (portfoliocrashtest.com)
- Robinhood (zero commission broker)
- Schwab Intelligent Portfolios (Custodian) (no fee)
- SciVantage
- SigFig (RIABiz commentary 7/22/15)
- Smart401k
- SmartPlanner ($40 one-time cost report)
- TradeKing Advisors (Ibbotson/Morningstar)
- Trizic (robo-services for advisors)
- US Bank (plans via Barrons)
- Upside Advisor (See also Liftoff)
- Vanguard Personal Advisor Services
- WealthAccess (VC)
- Wealthbot.io (story)
- Wealthfront
- Wealthminder (story)
- Wells Fargo considering developing robo advisor technology
- WiseBanyan ("free")
- WorthFM
Non-US (ht to Dan Bortolotti for Canadian suggestions)
* Some include the following in the "robo-adviser" category - Target Date Funds,
Merrill Edge
Select Portfolios,
Motley Fool Wealth Management,
inStream Solutions,
HelloWallet,
Everplans,
Aspiration,
Guardvest,
Oranj, and others.
Graveyard
Articles and links
- 11/20/2015 - Fidelity Joins Growing Field of Automated Financial Advice (NYTImes)
- 10/31/2015 - Robo-advisers: Does not compute (Economist)
- 8/23/2015 - Is Betterment Better? Time to Rate the Robot Advisors (the big players – LPL, Schwab, Pershing and the wirehouses themselves – are launching their own automated services in order to stake out territory for themselves.) (TrustAdvisor)
- 8/19/2015 - Battle For Supremacy: Robo-Advisors Versus Financial Advisors (USNews)
- 8/18/2015 - Robo Advisors Continue Growing AUM Despite Increased Competition (WM)
- 8/7/2015 - It's early days for most robos eyeing the 401(k) market (IN)
- 7/28/2015 - The Hidden Weakness of Robos (FP)
- 7/27/2015 - The Pros and Cons of Robo Advising (WSJ)
- 7/27/2015 - Ex-SEC Commissioner: Robo Takeover Isn't Imminent (FP)
- 7/23/2015 - Someting is Rotten in the State of Robo-Advisor Valuations (MFWire)
- 7/15/2015 - Your Clients Haven't Even Heard of Robo Advisors… Yet (FP)
- 7/9/2015 - Robo Advisers: A New Take on an Old Idea (WSJ)
- 7/9/2015 - Inside the Robo-Adviser Wars (Bloomberg)
- 7/8/2015 - Wealthfront CEO flames Betterment's 'outrageous' fees and 'abhorrent' ways; Betterment strikes back labeling the screed a Trumped-up PR play (RIABiz)
- 6/25/2015 - Breaking down the best robos for your practice (IN)
- 6/23/2015 - Charles Schwab Announces Availability of Institutional Intelligent Portfolios – Automated Investment Management Platform for Independent Registered Investment Advisors
- 6/23/2015 - Schwab's Robo For Advisors Goes Live (WM)
- 6/23/2015 - Schwab Rolls Out Robo Offering for RIAs & Hard Sell Ahead for Schwab's Newest Robo (FP)
- 6/22/2015 - An insider reveals turbo-contents of the In|Vest conference in New York, a summit of VCs, robo-founders and big banks (RIABiz)
- 6/22/2015 - Millennials and robo-advisors: A match made in heaven? (CNBC)
- 6/22/2015 - Long-Time CFP Warns Robo Threat Is 'Real'
How Traditional Firms Will Win the Digital Race ("200 players in America"?) (FP)
- 6/19/2015 - The Computer as a Financial Planner (NYTimes)
- 6/19/2015 - Schwab's robo for RIAs is set to launch in next 10 days, to delight of online forerunners (RIABiz)
- 6/18/2015 - Robo-Investing Craze Now Pitting Vanguard Against Fidelity & Robo Advisers to Run $2 Trillion by 2020 if This Model Is Right (Bloomberg) (or via FA Mag)
- 6/8/2015 - Why the Robo Advisor Model Won't Last (FP)
- 6/5/2015 - After Schwab and Betterment catch up to Wealthfront's AUM, the Palo Alto robo pioneer makes a stunning hire (RIABiz)
- 6/4/2015 - The Ideal Financial Advisor: Part Human, Part Droid? (USNews)
- 6/2/2015 - McKinsey: Robo-advisors have a cloudy future but 'virtual advice' delivered by 24-hour super-centers with experts and algorithms will win the day (RIABiz)
- 5/28/2015 - No, Robo-Advisors Won't Crush You Like a Bug (Scott MacKillop)
- 5/24/2015 - Robo-advisers want to plan your clients' future (InvestmentNews)
- 5/9/2015 - Ask the algorithm: Human wealth advisers are going out of fashion (Economist)
- 5/8/2015 - Investor Alert: Automated Investment Tools (SEC)
- 4/24/2015 - Putting [15] Robo Advisers to the Test &
Five Robo Advisers, Five Very Different Portfolios (WSJ)
- 4/22/2015 - We asked 4 robo advisers and 4 human advisers for portfolios for the same investor &
Can you tell a human financial adviser from a robot? (MW)
- 4/13/2015 -
How (Human) Advisors Might Adopt Robo-Advisors – Client Segmentation, Trading Tools And Indexing 2.0, And Full Stack Solutions (Michael Kitces)
- 4/8/2015 - Schwab, Vanguard Threaten Robo-Advisors’ Existence: Cerulli (Thinkadvisor)
- 4/6/2015 - Vanguard Launches Robo Adviser, Sort Of (WSJ) "It’s not a robo adviser, but there are similarities. I view it as more of a hybrid."
- 4/6/2015 - The commoditization of the robo adviser (II)
- 4/5/2015 - Five things to consider before hiring a robo-adviser (Brent Hunsberger)
- 4/1/2015 - Vanguard Group Bets Big on Financial Advice (II)
- 1/7/2015 - NY Resolution For You – Don’t Buy a Tesla (Meb Faber - includes table of 17 options with cost and minimum)
- 1/6/2015 - Brains, Bots or Both? Which Financial Adviser? (WSJ - discussion of investing options)
- 1/2/2015 - What exactly are robo-advisors, why did they steal the 2014 show and what will a 2015 repeat take? (RIABiz - includes summary of 10 options)
- Jan 2015 - What Exactly Do Online Investment Advisory Services Offer? (AAII)
- 12/19/2014 - Robo-Advisor AUM Grew 65 Percent In Eight Months (WealthManagement)
- 12/16/2014 - Most People Still Have No Idea What A "Robo-Advisor" Is (WealthManagement - only half of advisors identified as being at least somewhat familiar with robo-advisors, while only 11 percent of consumers had even heard the word before.)
- 10/16/2014 - Fidelity Investments Forges Alliance With Low-Cost Player (NYTimes - includes table summarizing 13 options)
- 9/23/2014 - The Tax Harvesting Water Hole (Michael Edesess)
- 9/16/2014 - The Best Robo Advisor … For You (ETF.com - series of articles with in depth review of 6 options)
- 8/14/2014 - 21 Best & Worst Robo-Advisors for Client Transparency (Thinkadvisor - includes info on 21 options)
- 6/2/2014 - What Advisors Can Do About Fee Compresion (FP - Last year, the average fee for new accounts was 1.02%, down from 1.04% in 2012 and 1.21% in 2011, according to PriceMetrix’s fourth annual Insights report.
- June 2014 - Best of the Online Investment Advisers (Kiplingers - focus on 7 options)
- 4/16/2014 - Is There A “Robo-Advisor” Bubble? (Kitces)
- 10/30/2013 - Corporate Insight online startup study
- 12/20/2012 - Financial Planners: Online vs. Brick-and-Mortar (BusinessWeek)
- 8/7/2011 - Will Online Financial Planning Catch On? (WSJ)
- 4/8/2011 - I don’t want to pay 25 basis points to anybody to do that for me (Bloomberg)
- Paladin Registry
Robo commentary
There has been a flurry of activity and commentary about the "Robo-Advisor" industry recently and it does seem like we are at or near an inflection point. Plus, how robots & algorithms are taking over is a hot topic in general. I started following the field closely a few years ago and had planned to post some link lists and commentary, but for various reasons (including rapidly moving events) I held off commenting, until April 2015. Recently, I've watched the industry developments closely, but in reality the roots of the robo-advisor movement go back nearly 20 years to around the time I initially launched InvestorHome. The first and still dominant firm in the robo-advisor space (which many commentaries seem to inexplicably miss) is in fact Financial Engines. Professor Sharpe actually gave me a heads-up and allowed me to take a look at the firm's web site prior to the official launch. The firm has become extremely successful and eventually went public in 2010. Other early players were mPower, which was founded in 1995 and acquired by Morningstar in 2003, and DirectAdvice.com, which opened for business in 1999, and apparently had over $16 million in VC funding but didn't make it in the long run.
With the recent launches of robo variants by Vanguard (which already has $20 billion in assets) and Schwab (which raised over $500 million in its three weeks), the ultimate question is how specifically do the individual offerings add value and are they likely to be successful in taking market share directly from traditional advisors and brokers, or are many of the other larger players more likely to develop their own tools and/or acquire smaller firms. Several high profile launches were killed, but more recently several of the younger firms have been
acquired.
I created the above table and comprehensive list to get a better handle on the players and how they compare. In the table, I have them organized by discretionary assets under management per SEC fillings (note some may not be accurate and I tried to mark those in question). I update this when I come across public information and I have a page here with what appears to be discretionary AUM as of 12/31/2014. Some of the firms cite other metrics, but AUM is useful for some purposes, and is publicly available. Note also that many of these are not offering comparable services and therefore the comparisons are not apples to apples (for instance, some combine human interaction in some form with automated services). Don't hesitate to let me know if I've missed any firms, if any of the metrics are inaccurate, or if you have any other suggestions.
Compiled by Gary Karz, CFA 
Host of InvestorHome
Proficient Investment Management, LLC
