Kelly O'Mara

Great article with lots of valuable insights, even in 2017! :) I was wondering why Yahoo and CNN stopped providing the Sigfig dashboard? Who buried it and for what reasons?

Silvan. I didn't know that but I'm guessing it's because of the shift to a BtoB model from BtoC.

Why SigFig is shifting its focus to using banks as middlemen despite having captive consumer audience with $350 billion

Mike Sha: We haven't actually rolled out our asset management service yet.

Financial Engines

SigFig

Celent

Trizic

Bank of the West

Mike Sha

Will Trout

Brad Matthews

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

The San Francisco-based robo-advisor has trepidation about the scale it would take to handle the conversions after bad experience

Why SigFig is shifting its focus to using banks as middlemen despite having captive consumer audience with $350 billion

Related Moves

November 20, 2019 at 10:19 PM

July 16, 2022 at 1:35 AM

July 11, 2019 at 4:26 AM

Silvan Schumacher

brooke southall

RIABiz Directory

White Paper Postings

Special Sections

Common Tags

Recent Articles

Popular Writers

RIABiz

Directory

Archives

Connect