Micro-investing platforms are disrupting the traditional investment advisory market principally through new business models. These companies typically do not take transaction fees but instead charge a low monthly fee. They allow users to make investments of much lower amounts of money than traditional investment firms would be willing to work with. Stash, for example, let’s customers make an investment of just $5. Other startups in this space with significant venture capital backing are Acorns and Robinhood.
Digital brokerages are another major trend in the wealthtech space. Motif Investing is among the biggest names; the company offers retail investors and professional advisors the chance to create and trade baskets of stocks or bonds or invest in pre-existing portfolios built around major economic trends.
The robo-advisor vertical includes companies in the B2B and B2C categories. The latter is led by Wealthfront, which has raised over $100m from investors since it was founded in 2011. In the B2B space, startups like SigFig are serving some of the world’s financial institutions through white-label products. The power of robo-advisors to disrupt stems from their use of algorithms to buy, sell and trade stocks and bonds at a fraction of the cost of human advisors. Combined, startups in the robo-advisor space have billions of dollars under management.
Wealth management and investing is being disrupted by a range of software and services that offer alternatives to traditional advisors. NerdWallet, a personal finance website and app, is one company building these tools, which include price comparison engines and advice from networks experts. Alpaca, meanwhile offers a platform for commission-free, automated trading in U.S. equities.
Startups offering digital portfolio management tools include Addepar, a company aimed at the B2B market which provides software to aggregate investment portfolios. It has raised some $200 million to date and boasts family offices, banks, foundations and endowments among its customers. Jacobi is another startup in this area seeking to disrupt established companies through its intelligence platform for investment managers.
Automated wealth management platforms are also making a play for the trillions of dollars at stake in retirement assets. Companies such as ForUsAll and Guideline are targeting small businesses, offering them a streamlined, high-design experience to manage employee pension plans. Personal Capital, meanwhile, offers a suite of online tools for individuals looking to make investments and save for retirement. Unlike large companies with high overheads and staff costs, robo-retirement firms can afford to accept clients with relatively small amounts of savings.
What is Wealthtech and where is it taking us? Why is it exploding now and what are the forces driving its expansion? These are the questions we answer on day 1 of our immersion program on The Future of Investment and Wealth Management. Learn from Cred, Bambu, AdviceRobo and Wealthbar about how they change the way we organize, spend, and receive our money both as individuals. We explain how startups have capitalized on demographic trends, new technologies and favorable conditions in the financial markets to create new companies that challenge established wealth managers and investment advisors. Trizic, Alkanza, WiseBanyan and Wealthfront illustrate how these dynamics work in practice. We analyze the disruptive business models these companies deploy and see how they are able to cut overheads by as much as 50% compared to traditional wealth management and in the process attract new cohorts of previously underserved customers.
The journey continues on day two with an exploration of the limits of the wealthtech space as they exist today. How many areas of traditional investment and wealth management are being disrupted? What is the nature of this change and how fast is it moving? We answer these questions through visits to startups operating in a wide range of niches. Hear from Sigfig, Betterment, Ellevest and Personal Capital on how they do robo-advisory. Discover how Addepar create innovation made possible by digital portfolio management. Micro-investing leaders Stash and Acorn, meanwhile, show us how through a strategy of investment in content they are educating, acquiring and retaining a new generation of customers.
Day three of the immersion program is dedicated to the technologies fueling the disruption of traditional wealth management. We hear from experts in artificial intelligence and machine learning, robotics and blockchain to learn what these technologies can currently do and what they will offer in the future. See how Bitwise, Fundrise, Interactive Brokers, Loyal 3, Stockpile, and Robinhood use emerging technologies to create competitive advantages and provide innovative, market-disrupting products and services.
Having seen and heard how digital is disrupting traditional wealth management on days 1 to 3, on day 4 of our immersion program we challenge attendees to turn words into action. Participatory workshops with leading Silicon Valley experts on design thinking, design sprints, venture capital and open innovation provide executives with the blueprints and frameworks they need to execute on innovation within their own organization. We look at how established wealth management firms like Goldman Sachs, Citi Ventures, Visa and JP Morgan are venturing into the wealthtech space through white-labelling, in-house product development and acquisition of tech talent. An interactive session with Western Union, Silicon Valley Bank, Wells Fargo offer an up-to-the-minute case study on how an established financial institution can turn into an important player inside the fintech ecosystem.
What’s next for Wealthtech? Day 5 brings the program to a close with its sights firmly set on the future. We learn about market trends still in their infancy and meet the companies seeking to capitalize on those trends. At ForUsAll, Silicon Investing and Guideline we see the cutting edge of fintech’s push into the trillion-dollar industry that is retirement assets. Motif, Headgeable, Artivest meanwhile, show us what a company looks like when it puts ethical investment at the core of its product. We discuss which areas of wealth management are next in line for the application of emerging technology to reimagine the user experience and undercut traditional business models.
Inspiration
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Open Pathways To New Business Opportunities
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Gain insight into the digital disruption of wealth management and see how startups exploit the gaps left by established corporations.
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Provides automated retirement savings plans to small- and medium-sized businesses and can be used as a standalone service or integrated with existing HR platforms.
The only automated financial advisor to offer the combination of financial planning, investment management and banking-related services exclusively through software.
Reinvent the wealth management industry with one powerful, integrated, cloud based platform designed to maximize flexibility, choice and value to financial advisors and their clients.
A stock brokerage application that democratizes access to the financial markets. The platform enables its customers to buy and sell U.S. stocks, ETFs, options, and cryptocurrencies with zero commission.
An online brokerage that allows retail investors to create and trade baskets of stocks and bonds or, “motifs.” Motif also offers an advisory platform for advisors to build investment portfolios or leverage existing motifs to sell to clients.
Next-generation intelligence platform for investment managers. Their risk and portfolio-construction tools enable practitioners to work and communicate through intuitive storyboards.
A global B2B SaaS platform providing leading financial institutions with a suite of automated advisory products to better serve their end customers.
Make it easy for beginners of any age, including children and millennials, to learn about stock, get started investing in stocks or to gift stocks.
Re-thinking and re-creating the way wealth managers connect with their clients in a digital world.
Empower a new generation of investors, giving everyone access to financial opportunity.
Financial operating system designed to bring common sense and ethical, data-driven investing to our financial world.
Operates a risk alignment platform that transforms the advisory industry by allowing investment advisors to capture a quantitative measurement of client risk tolerance.
Transforming financial lives through technology and people.
Provides companies the tools and access needed for the development of a digitally-enabled financial system.
The next generation financial services firm, helping people save & invest for goals, starting with their first $1 -- for free.
An all-inclusive 401(k) and full-stack solution that automates plan administration and compliance to growing businesses.
Provides consumers with personalized, unbiased advice so they can make smart money moves.
Leading global provider of robo-advisory technology for businesses of every size and industry, even new disruptors, transforming the digital wealth space.
Multinational financial services firm providing securities, and investment banking and management services.
Allows you to replicate the world's best investments.
Smart automated investing service that provides optimized investment returns for individual, IRA, ROTH IRA, and rollover 401(k) accounts.
Redefining investing for women. Ellevest is on a mission to close the gender-investing gap.
Its easy-to-use, mobile-first technology makes it simple for anyone to set aside and invest life's spare money.
Democratizing the stock market, making it easy and affordable for everyone to invest in brands they love, and IPOs, fee-free.
Develops funds, indexes, insight, and other services. The team behind Bitwise has backgrounds in technology, security, and finance.
An online service and tool that helps small businesses and startups set up 401(k) plans for their employees
The only private wealth management platform for millennials. They invest you like an ultra-wealthy private banking client with as little as $1 in 1 minute.
Builds a financial service company for the tech-native generation globally, starting out with a US stock brokerage for software developers.
Delivers the financial products that people need in a consumer-focused model that empowers people to choose their fee.
Citi's global corporate venturing arm, chartered to collaborate with internal and external partners to conceive, partner, launch, and scale new ventures to transform the financial services industry.
A members-only app that rewards the user with exclusive rewards for paying credit card bills.
Building online portfolio management services. This brings together technology, financial advice and expert portfolio management to make online investing simpler, easier and cheaper.
Develops and provides artificial intelligence and machine learning software to retail traders.
Offers an alternative to investing in stock and bonds -- the first low-cost, direct private market investment built for you.
Diversified financial services company with $1.3 trillion in assets, providing banking, insurance, investments.
Provides consumers and businesses with fast, reliable and convenient ways to send and receive money around the world.
Connects a wider audience of suitable investors with investment opportunities in top-quality private equity.
Deep discount electronic access broker offering online trading of stocks, options, futures, forex.
American multinational financial services company that facilitates electronic payment systems throughout the world.
Making high-quality investment advice more accessible and affordable to investors of all wealth levels.
