How you can benefit from the robo-advisor price war

iStock_000014977164MediumDigital investment advisor Wealthfront snagged some headlines this week by dropping its minimum investment from $5,000 to $500 and calling out its competitors, particularly Betterment, for charging too much.

Which is kind of unfortunate, because it could leave people with the impression that Betterment is gouging people, when it (like most of the other robo-advisors) charges a fraction of what other advisors do, and Betterment has no minimum investment requirement.

Betterment’s charge ranges from .15% to .35%. On accounts under $10,000, Betterment charges a minimum monthly fee of $3 unless investors set up auto-deposit. Wealthfront manages the first $10,000 you invest for free, and charges one-quarter of one percent (.25%) above that.

By contrast, many human advisors charge 1%, or even more, to manage investments. If you’re not familiar with robo-advisors, you can read about them here and here.

Roboadvisors, in other words, are providing the cheap, conflict-free investment management that many people, especially those without big portfolios, have been waiting for. They’re even a possible lower-cost solution for those with big portfolios, now that Vanguard is offering a robo-advisor service paired with access to human financial advisors for a .3% annual charge.

If you’re intrigued by the idea of low-cost investment management, don’t let a little dust-up between competitors dissuade you. Check out your options and make up your own mind.

 

Vanguard–the new robo-advisor?

IiStock_000014977164Medium‘ve written a lot recently about digital advisors (including the piece I wrote for AARP, “Do-it-yourself made easy“). Wealthfront, one of the leaders in this space, now has $1.7 billion under management.

That seemed pretty impressive, until I saw a recent piece in InvestmentNews about Vanguard’s Personal Advisor Services. Although still basically a pilot program, the “human-augmented online advice platform,” as IN termed it, now has $4.2 billion under management.

For all that’s been written about the start-ups who use powerful algorithms to manage your portfolio while you sleep, it’s the the Vanguard offering that may be the game changer. Vanguard can offer everything the start-ups do–asset allocation, automatic rebalancing, ultra-low-cost investment choices–in the mantle of a trusted firm known for its integrity and thrift. The cost? Three-tenths of one percentage point, or $300 a year for a $100,000 portfolio. That’s only slightly more than the .25 percent the newcomers typically charge.

Advisors charging more certainly will argue they’re adding value. But if you’re paying much more for financial management, you might want to at least take a look at what you can get for less.