Find the Right Robo Adviser for You
With their winning combination of low account minimums and affordable access to professional investment and financial-planning advice, robo advisers continue to grow briskly. Industry leader Vanguard Personal Advisor Services, for instance, has seen its robo assets under management nearly triple in four years. Independent platforms are going public to help fund growth (and enable founders and early investors to monetize some equity positions).
In the basic, digital-only robo model, algorithms are employed to build, monitor and rebalance portfolios (and often provide tax efficiency) using low-cost exchange-traded funds. In recent years, more robo clients have sought access to live financial advisers, especially as the pandemic created uncertainty and anxiety. Nearly all robo providers have responded by adding a hybrid tier that offers both a digital platform and the ability to interact with human investment and planning professionals.
The robo industry is maturing but still rapidly evolving. For instance, rosters of investment options are expanding to include socially responsible funds, alternatives to traditional market-value-weighted indexing, cryptocurrencies and even actively managed funds. Financial institutions are encouraging robo clients to broaden their financial relationship with the sponsoring bank or brokerage to include services such as credit cards or borrowing. Robo platforms have made it easier to link outside accounts so that clients can view their entire financial picture on a single dashboard.
The following list of 12 robo advisers is designed to help you identify a service that is suited to your needs (see below for some search advice). Our list is not a ranking of the top advisers. Instead, we used several criteria to draw up our list, including assets under management, quality of the digital platform and, in certain cases, investment performance. For portfolio performance, we leaned on data from Backend Benchmarking, a leading independent source of robo adviser industry research.
Acorns
- Tiered service levels*: Yes
- Minimum to invest: $5
- $36 to
