An insider reveals turbo-contents of the In|Vest conference in New York, a summit of VCs, robo-founders and big banks
SigFig's Mike Sha talked Bank of the West, Motif's Hardeep called start-ups 'features' and the five-year number jumped to $2 trillion
David Canter
|Jon Stein
|Hardeep Walia
|Mike Sha
|Alexey Sokolin
|Bo Lu
|John Bahnken
|Matt Harris
|Gareth Jones
Stephen Winks
Motif’s Hardeep Walia observation that “robos are features masquerading as companies” is profound, as like the brokerage business, there is not expert authenticated (back to statute) prudent investment process that simplifies and establishes professional standing in advisory services. Until the brokerage world embraces professional standing and fiduciary duty in advisory services it leaves a path of vulnerability for robo advisors to afford an unprecedented level of investment and administrative counsel (beyond that which is humanly possible to process) at a fraction of the cost.
The brokerage industry must embrace fiduciary duty and robo advice or run the risk of (1) acting counter to the investors best interest (2) with an inferior and outdated value proposition that is (3) far more expensive than the robo assisted RIA alternatives.
SCW
Stephen Winks
Libby
It seems to me that all comments about Robo-advisors is about fees, nothing about return. It seems to me that those investors who focus just on fees will get what they deserve. The Vanguard S&P 500 index fund is the largest fund in the country mainly because investors choose to invest in this fund because fees are extremely low. They fail to look at other funds. Example. Invest $10,000 in Vanguard S&P and $10,000 into American Funds Growth Fund of America on 8/31//1976. The GFA will charge 5.75% upfront fee plus 0.66% annual fees. Vanguard charges 0% upfront fee and 0.17% annual management fee. What intelligent individual would pass up this deal! What idiot would pay a fee!!!! As we can see the GFA is way more expensive than Vanguard, so the average and not so average investors who can’t think beyond just fees will invest that $10,000 into the Vanguard fund ( as evidenced by how large that fund is). Fast forward, now that $10,000 as of 6/25/2015 in the Vanguard fund is $583,319. But the GFA is $1,676,296. Even on a 10 year rolling average the GFA will beat the Vanguard 70% of the time….all these investors could have had much more net worth in their portfolio if they took a second to think!!!! But that is the problem with this country…It is not just about fees…
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Betterment, LLC
Financial Planning Software
Top Executive: Jon Stein