Why Betterment, Wealthfront, and Other Online Investment Firms are Wrong about Financial Advisors.
FORBES
MIKE ALFRED,CONTRIBUTOR
In a recent blogpost, Betterment made the broad-sweeping claim that Financial Advisors are Bad for Your Wealth (Update: Betterment has taken down this post as of 1:30pm EST today. Update #2: The post is back up at 3pm EST). To make their position clear, they included an unfortunate image of a human face on the body of a pig. It didn’t take long for the Reformed Broker Josh Brown to draw the conclusion that Betterment thinks Financial Advisors are Pigs.
Betterment isn’t the only firm that believes financial advisors are greedy, inept, and obsolete. Last week, I had the privilege of sitting on the Web Driven Investment Advice panel at the Future of Money Conference in San Francisco. CNET’s Rafe Needleman moderated and I shared the stage with the founding CEOs of three of the up-and-coming firms in the space: Bill Harris of Personal Capital, Andy Rachleff of Wealthfront, and Bo Lu of FutureAdvisor. Before the panel started, we met up in the green room for a discussion and it quickly became apparent that the room was evenly divided between those who recognize and appreciate the value that financial advisors bring to the table — and those who don’t.
Betterment isn’t the only firm that believes financial advisors are greedy, inept, and obsolete. Last week, I had the privilege of sitting on the Web Driven Investment Advice panel at the Future of Money Conference in San Francisco. CNET’s Rafe Needleman moderated and I shared the stage with the founding CEOs of three of the up-and-coming firms in the space: Bill Harris of Personal Capital, Andy Rachleff of Wealthfront, and Bo Lu of FutureAdvisor. Before the panel started, we met up in the green room for a discussion and it quickly became apparent that the room was evenly divided between those who recognize and appreciate the value that financial advisors bring to the table — and those who don’t.
