Raymond James has announced it will integrate robo advice services with its financial planners; the firm says it will use an internally developed system available to its approximately 7,100 advisors; the platform will be accessible to clients and overseen by their advisor; the firm says it will also comply with the Department of Labor's new fiduciary rules. Source
Business Insider Intelligence has released a report covering all aspects of the fintech market; says annual financing globally for fintech reached $15 billion in August which is likely to surpass the total of $19 billion financed in 2015; Chinese fintech investments and insurtech have been catalysts for growth in 2016; robo advisors and blockchain are also two of the market's rapidly growing, emerging technologies. Source
The implementation of GDPR is around the corner as it starts in May across Europe, while most of the regulations will benefit robo advisors the compliance costs could rise significantly; users will be able to ask for all data related to them and all data a rival adviser might have on them, getting this done correctly and efficiently will take time; the customer benefits are high, startups on the other hand might end up getting a lot more costs then anticipated. Source.
Scalable has reached 100 million British pounds ($121.72 million) in assets under management for its robo advisory services; the firm has been averaging new business of 5 million British pounds ($6.09 million) per week and has over 2,500 customers; it offers low fees and daily investment monitoring with risk focused algorithms. Source
Financial Planning explores the possibility of an IPO from the leaders in the robo-advice market including Betterment, Wealthfront and Personal Capital; the companies continue to raise money but some question the viability of the market; Betterment has over $10 billion in assets under management, Wealthfront has $7.4 billion and Personal Capital has $4.9 billion; the companies have a combined 420,000 clients and 548,000 accounts; article shares statements by each company regarding IPOs and the differences between the platforms. Source
Australian robo advisor SuperEd is seeking AUS$6 million (USD$4.53 million) to expand its services; the founders expect to use the funds to provide white label robo advisory services for Australian superannuation funds; the robo advisor is also developing tools for analyzing retirement income from the funds. Source
Wealthsimple is a Canadian firm backed by Montreal-based Power Financial and they are looking to launch their robo advisory solution to US clients soon; in accordance with US securities law, Wealthsimple received approval to operate as an investment advisor by the SEC in October 2016; there is no account minimums for their product and the first $10,000 invested will be fee free, anything above $10,000 will be subject to a management fee of 0.5%. Source
SoFi was in talks to acquire clearing and custody firm Apex but the talks failed and the lender instead made...
Wealthfront, a robo advisor, has launched Path, a new offering to aid in retirement planning; by connecting financial accounts, Path will analyze past behavior to ensure users are on the right track for retirement savings while also taking into consideration social security, inflation and investment returns; users can also modify settings such as savings to project changes to their financial situation; Path also helps users prioritize contributions and allocations to both Wealthfront and non-Wealthfront accounts taking into consideration tax advantaged accounts. Source
A new report by Accenture shows that seven out of 10 consumers would welcome exclusive robo-generated advice for investing and insurance needs; not all is lost for the human experience; 68% of consumers would still want to interact with a human for complex financial needs like a mortgage or to help solve a problem; the main reasons given for this shift are computers are seen to be less biased, they make services cheaper and the tasks are done faster; additionally, the report showed that consumers were willing to share their data if they thought a non traditional provider could be faster and cheaper. Source