Brooke Southall

Randy Bullard is precisely what the ROBO industry needs to fully flesh out its role in the larger advisory services business.  To be effective at advisory services b/ds must unlearn a lot of bad habits that deny professional standing to brokers when rendering advice--which give ROBOs a cultural and technological edge in supporting a prudent expert standard. Randy understands the impediments of legacy brokerage systems and how to overcome them, which is essential to attracting the best and brightest. (1) Treating trade execution as a cost center tobe minimized in the client's best interest, (2) retooling of product menus so they are consistent with fiduciary duty,(3)  embracing a more modern approach to portfolio construction in support of continuous, comprehensive counsel required by statute, are major industry redefining innovations available to ROBOs which culturally are not possible in a brokerage format. As the brokerage industry weighs its conversion to advisory services in the client's best interest, their biggest impediment is their culture. Ballard can make a big difference in broaching highly sensitive topics which are within the unique wheelhouse of ROBOs that must be mastered, if b/ds are to remain relevant in advisory services. SCW

Randy Bullard pitches himself into major role at SigFig to add his Placemark knowledge to a robo hothouse

Envestnet

BrightScope

SigFig

Vestwell

Randy Bullard

Mike Alfred

Mike Sha

Aaron Schumm

Stripped down to its essentials, financial advice is a fairly straightforward proposition. Done well, a highly ethical individual stewards the assets and actions of an investor in a personal and professional interchange.
 
But now a vibrant new class of entrepreneurs is staking their fates and their fortunes on the premise that financial advice can be delivered in a better, cheaper, easier, more ethical, more transparent manner and, as a bonus, in a way more devoid of human annoyance on both ends of the transaction.
 
Cue the robo-advisors, arguably a callous misnomer for automated asset management. 
 
The prototypical robo-advisory entrepreneur has more brands on his or her resume than NASCAR. The bona fides of these industry upstarts often include Ivy-level colleges and MBA programs at Harvard or Stanford. They are often flush with IPO dollars realized at concerns like LinkedIn, Facebook, eBay, Amazon  and Microsoft. 
 
Robo-folk believe that technology is not an enabler of advice but rather, if engineered correctly, advice itself in digital form. 
 
And, they believe the best solutions originate in Silicon Valley or academia, not Wall Street. Robo-entrepreneurs are white-boarding the whole business model, culture and technology from scratch in the conviction that little can be learned from a legacy advice system still rooted in an investment banking culture acting under the core premise that if stockbrokers get rich some of the good effects will trickle down to clients – with the clients none the wiser. 
 
Robo-advisors are a scintillating topic for students of the advice game as they grow by hundreds of millions in assets every month, constantly evolve their business models and receive cash infusions from ever-larger swaths of venture capitals.
 
Throw in the fact that robo-advisors have yet to see a dime in profits -- and won’t in the foreseeable future -- and you have real intrigue. 
 
RIABiz has avidly covered the fast-evolving robo-advice phenomenon and will continue to do so. We present the growing body of articles here.

Robo-Advisors

Outsourced investments are one of the fastest-growing categories in the financial advisory world. Perched between
the asset custodian and the financial advisor, these (mostly) turnkey asset management programs can handle all or a 
portion of their investing, technology and fiduciary duties.

Advocates of using these TAMPs point to how it's better for the advisor because it frees up more time to spend with clients and prospects. It's also better for clients because the duties are being handled by specialized professionals who benefit from economies of scale.

Skeptics say that it adds a layer of cost and takes away an element of control from the advisors in executing according to a client's financial plan.

TAMPs

The RIA business has many tech vendors working hard to serve its diverse needs, and we're seeing technology become a more crucial part of setting up and running an RIA than ever before.

The Technology section includes unbiased tech reviews, tech-related news, and coverage of tech-related conferences.

Technology

The serially successful wrap-program pioneer convinced CEO Mike Sha that he was the right guy to demystify the legacy-robo tech divide to employees -- and close deals

Randy Bullard pitches himself into major role at SigFig to add his Placemark knowledge to a robo hothouse

Stephen Winks

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