Extended list of United States firms that could loosely be categorized as Robo-Advisors*
- Acorns Advisers, LLC
- Amerivest Portfolios (Custodian) offers irebal free to TDA advisors and has deals
with
Autopilot,
Jemstep,
NestEgg Wealth,
Trizic &
Upside Advisor.
- AssetBuilder
- Autopilot (CLS Investments)
- Betterment
- Blooom (401K advisor)
- Blueleaf
- CircleBlack (
BloombergBlack)
- Covestor (subscription)
- Edelman Online (discussion)
- E*Trade Online Managed Investment Portfolio
- Fidelity (Custodian) (deals with Betterment and Learnvest and may offer own version)
- Financial Engines (usually via plan sponsor)
- FinancialGuard
- FlexScore
- FolioDynamix (Actua technology solutions)
- FolioInvesting (subscription)
- 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)
- Morningstar Associates
- MotifInvesting
- MyMoneyGuide
- MyPlanIQ.com (Email subscription)
- NestEgg Wealth
Nestwise.com, previously Veritat Advisors
- Nextcapital (free and premium portfolio tools)
- PersonalCapital
- Plan and Act (subscription)
- ProManage LLC (via plan sponsor)
- Quovo (platform for financial professionals) (VC)
- Rebalance IRA
- RiXtrema (portfoliocrashtest.com)
- Robinhood (zero commission broker)
- Schwab Intelligent Portfolios (Custodian) (no fee)
- SigFig
- Smart401k
- SmartPlanner ($40 one-time cost report)
- TradeKing Advisors (Ibbotson/Morningstar)
- Trizic (robo-services for advisors)
- Upside Advisor (See also Liftoff)
- Vanguard Personal Advisor Services
- WealthAccess (VC)
- Wealthfront
- Wealthminder (story)
- WiseBanyan ("free")
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,
Aspiration,
Guardvest,
Oranj, and others.
Graveyard
Articles and links
- Paladin Registry
- 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 (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 - "robo advisors" now manage a total of $19 billion in assets ... Charles Schwab and TradeKing announced new online account services for retail investors ... Schwab plans to bring a version of its Intelligent Portfolios service to human advisors. Vanguard and Merrill Edge announced plans to expand services for less affluent clients to compete with the cheaper robo-advisors, and Fidelity and TD Ameritrade plan to use technology from online services to help their human advisors.)
- 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)
- 11/22/2011 - Should I hire a financial adviser or go it alone? (CNNMoney)
- 8/7/2011 - Will Online Financial Planning Catch On? (WSJ)
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 somewhat of 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 now. 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 robo-advisor (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 $17 billion in assets under management) and Schwab (which raised over $500 million in three weeks), the very real question that needs to be asked is how specifically do the offerings add value and are they likely to be successful in taking market share directly from traditional brokers/advisors, 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 as of 12/31/2014 per SEC fillings (note some may not be accurate and I tried to mark those in question). 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 cost comparisons are not apples to apples (for instance, some combine personal services 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
