Betterment has increased its assets under management (AUM) by approximately $1 billion in eight months; AUM is currently $6.2 billion; diversification to new client segments has significantly helped the firm to grow; beginning as a consumer focused platform, it now has a Betterment for Business platform with approximately 300 customers; the early expansion to businesses primarily underserved by legacy providers is likely to be an advantage for the firm as robo advisor offerings increase. Source
In this conversation, we talk with Brian Barnes of M1 Finance, about finance “super apps”, the cost-efficiencies of robo-advisors, fractionalized share trading, and tackling the titans of the Wealth Management industry. We also discuss the nuts and bolts of the financial infrastructure making this possible.
M1 Finance bundles together roboadvisory, neobanking and lending into a single “super app”, allowing for combined pricing power (i.e., charging nothing on asset allocation). The firm currently has $3 billion in AUM, a growth of 50% in the past four months and tripling their total in just over a year. Notably, the company has its own broker/dealer and offers fractional shares, and partners with Lincoln Savings bank on the deposit accounts. That makes for a compelling business model from securities lending, interchange, and order flow.
In this conversation, we chat with Jason Wenk, who is the Founder & CEO at Altruist. Apart from this Jason is a writer, self-proclaimed math geek, and investment systems developer. He began his career at Morgan Stanley in NYC at age 20, working on investment research and asset management systems development. After this Jason founded FormulaFolios: quantitative, computer-driven investment models based on academic research to help remove emotion from investing. FormulaFolios would later develop into a standalone asset manager and go on to rank as a fastest-growing private company by Inc. magazine 4 years in a row, reaching as high as #10 in 2017.
More specifically, we discuss all things wealth tech, as well as, serving people with financial planning, financial advice, and generally improving their financial health.
Forbes is reporting that Betterment is looking to take on one of the core offerings of banks: the checking account;...
Building off of the $70mn funding round from the summer Betterment is now reportedly worth $1bn; the $1bn mark is significant as it denotes that a company is considered a unicorn; the valuation makes Betterment the first robo advisor to reach unicorn status; the company currently has over $11bn in assets under management. Source.
One of the first robo advisors has now added a checking account to their suite of services; Betterment Checking is...
Mastercard expands cryptocurrency program to allow more firms to issue cards on its network Inside Betterment’s move into banking with...
Through the partnership, the firm hopes to provide more personalization to their over 270,000 users; both portfolios were vetted by Betterment to ensure quality and affordability standards; Dan Egan, director of behavioral finance investments at Betterment stated, “We wanted to get these strategies out to our clients as quickly as possible, rather than build them out ourselves.” Source
Vanguard has joined the growing trend of providing low cost advice for retirement with the launch of Digital Advisor; Digital...
In this episode we talk with Sarah Levy, the CEO of Betterment, about investing, robo-advice, the banking crisis, gender diversity and much more.