Tag Archives: Betterment

LearnVest is now an RIA, adds Portfolio Builder service for $599

Posted on September 11, 2012 by in Technology

Online financial planning provider’s registration as SEC adviser allows investment advice delivered by personal CFP® practitioners

LearnVest, the online personal finance start-up founded by Alexa von Tobel, announced today that it is now an SEC registered investment adviser and added a plan called “Portfolio Builder” to address general investment recommendations.

Readers should recognize LearnVest from recent updates (see: LearnVest’s Mission to Wrangle Your Personal Finances) and as a member of the wave of “robo-adviser” start-ups, with Personal Capital, Wealthfront, and Betterment among them.

Without the investment adviser registration, LearnVest previously limited advice delivered through its online program to budgeting and money management. LearnVest clients could enroll in the “Complete Plan” program for $349 per year and receive a financial plan, four phone calls, and unlimited email support from the company’s CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER(TM) certificants.

Going forward, clients still have the option to work with a personal CFP® practitioner at the $349 per year level (now called “The 5-Year Planner” level) or choose to receive general investment advice under the “Portfolio Builder” plan priced at $599 per year.

While investment advice is now available, Portfolio Builder clients won’t receive specific guidance on buying or selling securities or which investment account custodian to select. Clients will need to perform those selections on their own with general input from their LearnVest planner.

There’s a lot of media coverage on LearnVest’s announcement, so visit Google’s News results page and select the outlet of interest.

To learn more about LearnVest’s positioning in the market, watch their 1:07 explainer video below.

Finally, view the LearnVest SEC Form ADV Part II brochure here.

 

FPPad Bits and Bytes for June 8

Posted on June 8, 2012 by in Bits & Bytes

So, have you reset your LinkedIn password yet?

With Boston on my schedule Monday through Wednesday (and some new video filmed that is coming soon), followed by Atlanta on Thursday and Friday, you can understand how frequent posts just aren’t high on my priority list. Nevertheless, I’m devoted to giving you the BEST (not simply all) technology stories from around the web this week.

Here are this week’s stories of interest:

Cabinet NG Launches CNG-SHARE, Secure File Sharing Portal from Yahoo! Finance

[See, enterprise and business document management providers won’t stand still while consumer services like Dropbox race ahead. Here, Cabinet NG is extending its functionality by offering a portal to share documents in the CNG repository with individuals outside of the firm (e.g. your clients). The portal can be white labeled for your firm, too. Though not as slick as Dropbox’s desktop sync, it’s a step in the right direction.]  Cabinet NG (CNG), provider of electronic document management and workflow management software, today announced the availability of the industry’s first fully integrated document management, cloud-based file sharing, and workflow solution.

Can Future Advisor be the self-driving car for financial advice? from O’Reilly Radar

[Give FutureAdvisor credit: I filmed Bo Lu last month at FinovateSpring 2012, and in the last week, they received this feature in O’Reilly and one in the Wall St. Journal. Advisers, you need to pay attention to what these new web apps are doing for clients that you’re turning away because of low assets.]  Future Advisor launched in 2010 with the goal of providing better financial advice through the Internet using data and algorithms. They’re competing against startups like Wealthfront and Betterment, among others.

Schwab shifts its strategy on its massive Intelligent Integration from RIABiz.com

[I was on Schwab’s press call 30 minutes after delivering a presentation in Boston. Credit to Brooke for turning this article around quickly, which captured much of the essence of the call, while I was in holding patterns over a stormy DFW airport.] Schwab Advisor Services has shifted strategies on its giant Intelligent Integration initiative, and rather than picking the best of breed in technology categories, the firm is looking to select the industry’s top platforms.

Black Diamond is setting its sights on smaller advisors and other things I learned over breakfast with Reed Colley from RIABiz.com

[Another great segment from Brooke on Black Diamond’s first year under the umbrella of Advent (see Advent Purchases Black Diamond Performance Reporting for Approximately $73 Million). But what isn’t discussed is what Black Diamond is doing to address the challenges of scaling up the adviser on-board process, training, and customer support of critical portfolio management software. Anyone want to chime in?] Since being acquired at this time last year by Advent Software, Black Diamond has increased its assets administered by 75% to $110 billion and it now serves 350 advisory firms.

Managing Customer Contact from Financial-Planning.com

[The category of CRM software for advisers is crowded, yes, but there really are just a few market dominators followed by a long tail of solutions with 1%-2% adoption. Joel Bruckenstein highlights new player Wealth Advisor CRM. My take? Registered reps might find it useful, independent RIAs likely will find it limited. At $65/month for a 15-user database, Redtail is a very attractive alternative.] Advisors already have no shortage of customer relationship management products to choose from, so does the marketplace really need another one? The folks at Wealth Advisor CRM think so, and perhaps they are right. Their offering may be just different enough and inexpensive enough to attract a sizable following.

Plantly launches “missing allocation tool” to the public

Posted on May 31, 2012 by in Software, Technology

Brooklyn-based startup launches free asset allocation planning tool to the public

Investors (read: your future clients) have an ever-increasing array of options to obtain financial advice online. You’ve read about sites and apps like Personal Capital, Betterment, SigFig, and Wealthfront on FPPad before.

Plantly, a Brooklyn-based startup, is the latest financial services startup seeking to lower the barriers between investors and access to investment guidance.

On Plantly’s website, users can select from a range of five plans arranged by targeted return and level of risk. Each week the five plans are optimized to adjust their asset allocations according to Plantly’s proprietary risk/return models.

Ideally, according to Plantly’s website, investors select a plan based on their tolerance for risk and expectation for return, allocate their own portfolio according to the plan, and reevaluate plans annually. Plantly plans begin with principles from Harry Markovitz’s Modern Portfolio Theory that are then run through custom forecasting, probability, and scenario engines to identify potential outcomes of individual plans.

There’s a lot more detail behind Plantly on its website, and when I stop traveling, I hope to have a chance to virtually sit down with Plantly’s founders for some additional insight.

It’s an intriguing option among the suite of online investment tools, especially for the do-it-yourself investor seeking allocation guidance supported by reasonable thought and scenario testing (though no back testing will ever produce a loss-proof allocation).

 

 

FPPad Bits and Bytes for May 25

Posted on May 25, 2012 by in Bits & Bytes

Between a presentation in Charleston, SC on Monday, Redtail U in Dallas on Tuesday, filming more Spotlight Video on Wednesday, and taking my son to the zoo on Thursday, updates to FPPad rank about number nine on my list of important things to do. But I still can set aside time this morning to give you the best financial planning technology news from around the Web.

Here are this week’s stories of interest:

Advent Software Selects ByAllAccounts to Provide Retail Account Information to Advent OnDemand® Users from PRWeb

[Advent isn’t the largest portforlio management software by number of users among RIAs, but it’s definitely a top ten vendor. In this latest announcement, advisers will benefit from ByAllAccounts’ thousands of connections with held-away accounts they may not ordinarily aggregate, or perhaps aggregate manually.] Advent Software, Inc., a leading provider of software and services for the global investment management industry, announced it has selected ByAllAccounts, Inc. to provide retail account information to users of the Advent OnDemand® service.

Retire Logix to link with FPA’s PlannerSearch from Financial Advisor Magazine

[Financial planning software provider Financial Logix and the Financial Planning Association have partnered to make it easier for consumers using the Retire Logix software to find a financial planner through the FPA’s network of thousands of member planners.] Consumers using Retire Logix on their mobile phones now will be able to search for financial planners with a simple click.

Personal Capital is featured in four updates this week. Evidently one can “buy” widely distributed press by building a compelling financial dashboard from scratch.

Personal Capital’s Beautiful App Convinces The Wealthy To Trust Their Money To Strangers from FastCompany

[What buzz does Personal Capital consistently generate? Highlights of their data aggregation and comprehensive dashboard. But what most media outlets overlook is Personal Capital’s 10 employee financial advisors and how successful they are at managing assets to generate revenue for the business.] Personal Capital, a startup cofounded by Bill Harris, the former CEO of Intuit and PayPal, has created a new service that’s part “high tech,” part “high touch” to tackle both parts of the financial management equation.

Wealth management: Private pursuits from The Economist

[The next wave of multi-millionaires (and billionaires) from Facebook’s IPO is about to hit Silicon Valley. When they do, which method of wealth management will they choose? Traditional institutions or the nimble, tech-enabled startups?] Silicon Valley is already awash with traditional wealth managers. UBS, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and others are expanding in San Francisco and around Silicon Valley. They have recently been joined by online rivals such as Wealthfront, MarketRiders and Personal Capital, all of which use technology to help clients build customised asset portfolios at a small fraction of what traditional wealth managers would charge.

Personal Capital app demo from TechCrunch (embedded below for your convenience)

[Here’s a long interview of Personal Capital’s Bill Harris by TechCrunch, including some short segments of an app walkthrough. At least in this video you discover Personal Capital has 10 employee advisers ready to service clients under their RIA.] The CEO and VP of Engineering of Personal Capital demo their financial app.

Online RIAs will mostly fail — and here are 10 reasons why from RIABiz.com

[This article is last, because its author, Jack Waymire, misses the point in my opinion. I feel one must take the perspective of the prospective client, perhaps a 30-something startup employee that is looking to cash out some lucrative stock options. Where is that individual going to go for financial advice? A shop that has paper account forms, paper quarterly reports, and no mobile app? Forget it! It’s 2012 for goodness sake.] I believe these companies and their financial backers have badly underestimated the strength of the relationships that exist between investors and advisors. For this reason, I believe these websites will fail or, at best, be marginally successful. Here’s why.

Personal Capital app demo

 

FPPad Bits and Bytes for May 4

Posted on May 4, 2012 by in Bits & Bytes

Recent travel and a nasty cold this week prevented me from setting aside time for regular updates to FPPad. I just returned from giving a presentation in Phoenix, got sick, and want to get better before I head to San Francisco on Monday for Finovate Spring 2012.

I still need to unpack my bag from Wednesday and repack it for Monday, but you are free to proceed with this week’s stories of interest:

SigFig offers to tune up your investment portfolio from GigaOM.com

[Over the past few months I’ve highlighted new platforms like Personal Capital aiming to reach investors directly through simple websites and mobile apps. SigFig is another one to watch that officially launched earlier this week.] SigFig, a product born from portfolio tracker Wikinvest, is finally launching formally Tuesday, offering to make understanding investments easy. The free service, which has been in beta, allows users to sync all their investments and monitor them in real-time from one dashboard with extensive analysis conducted in the background to help find where users can save money.

Why Betterment, Wealthfront, and Other Online Investment Firms are Wrong about Financial Advisors from Forbes.com

[For more on the “robo adviser” trend, here’s an op-ed piece from Brightscope’s Mike Alfred in Forbes. My take: clients of the future will still want to engage and interact with human being advisers, only they want their advisers to be proficient in technology and support virtual engagement, both online and on mobile devices.] In a recent blogpost, Betterment made the broad-sweeping claim that Financial Advisors are Bad for Your Health. To make their position clear, they included an unfortunate image of a human face on the body of a pig. It didn’t take long for the Reformed Broker Josh Brown to draw the conclusion that Betterment thinks Financial Advisors are Pigs.

Redtail Technology Launches Integration with NetDocuments from PRWeb.com

[So Redtail CRM already has a document storage system called Imaging, but it lacks a number of components found in a true document management system. Redtail could either update Imaging to include new features, or it can support an integration with a third party document management provider. Alas, it appears Redtail’s strategy is to pursue the latter.] NetDocuments, a leading cloud content management service provider, announced a new integration today with Redtail Technology’s innovative web-based Client Relationship Management (CRM) solution for Financial Advisors.