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New 9th Edition of The Robo Report(TM) by Backend Benchmarking Now Published For Q3 2018

Tuesday, 06 November 2018 02:00 PM

Backend Benchmarking

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Goldman Sachs' Honest Dollar and Edelman Financial Robo Advisors Refuse to Open Accounts

MARTINSVILLE, NJ / ACCESSWIRE / November 6, 2018 / The new 9th Edition of The Robo Report™ by Backend Benchmarking covering the third quarter of 2018 has been published. The company continues to track accounts at robo advisors that have tried to shut them down. The latest is Goldman Sachs' Honest Dollar and Edelman Financial who have refused to open accounts by Ken Schapiro, the publisher of the Robo Report™.

"This is just the latest example of robo advisors not wanting transparency for their investors and financial advisors about what they are doing or not doing with customer money. Vanguard and WealthFront also tried to shut us down, but we have back up accounts at all the robos and we are here to stay. We are a fact of life now for these financial institutions that claim they care about investors, yet refuse to be transparent," said Mr. Schapiro, Founder of Backend Benchmarking, the publisher of The Robo Report™.

Highlights of the third Quarter Robo Report™:

  • tZero, which is owned by Overstock.com recently raised $160 m in a security token offering. tZero is primarily a blockchain company that also offers a robo advice product. As our newest robo account tZero led other robos by a wide margin in the third quarter.
  • Betterment and FutureAdvisor have fallen behind.
  • Capital One sold all of its investment businesses in the quarter, closed its robo, and moved all customer money to self directed accounts, whereby Etrade bought a chunk of those self directed accounts.
  • UBS closed SmartWealth, its UK robo advisor, but just launched a robo in U.S. run by SigFig who acquired SmartWealth's technology as part of the closure.
  • Fidelity took the two-year number top spot in performance and unseated Vanguard from the top position. Earlier this year Fidelity swapped out funds held in their portfolio for ones they created with no expense ratios. This quarter they released two mutual funds available outside of their robo with 0 expense ratios and no management fees.
  • Theme in the News: JPMorgan Chase plans to launch a robo advisor as part of its new app that has 100 free trades in the first year. Their release of a free trading app is intensifying the race to zero in financial services.
  • Wealthsimple - Canadian based robo advisor will launch a free trading platform in Canada with longer term plans to follow suit in the US.

The Report has two years of performance return numbers for robo advisors at Betterment, SigFig, Schwab, Vanguard, Personal Capital, Etrade, FutureAdvisor, WiseBanyan, Fidelity Go, and Acorns. In addition, the Report covers Ally Financial, Capital One, Ellevest, Fidelity Go, FutureAdvisor, Merrill Edge, Morgan Stanley, SoFi, TD Ameritrade, TIAA, T. Rowe Price, tZero Wealthfront, WealthSimple, Wells Fargo, UBS, USAA, and Zacks Advantage.

Alongside reporting performance, The Robo Report™ includes a discussion on the trends during the quarter that drove performance as well as a news section covering recent industry events.

The Report ranks the top three robos by performance in Equity, Fixed Income and Total Portfolio as well as historical performance since each accounts' inception.

To get a first-hand understanding of how the providers operate and invest, Backend Benchmarking opened and funded portfolios seeking a similar asset allocation to allow for comparison. The knowledge of the underlying assets held helps to understand the structure of the portfolio, the risk, and what is driving performance.

This report represents Backend Benchmarking's research, analysis, and opinion only; the period tested was short in duration and may not provide a meaningful analysis. There can be no assurance that the performance trend demonstrated by robos vs. indices during the short period will continue.

The Robo Report™ is available for free at https://theroboreport.com/. Follow the Report on Twitter @theroboreport.

CONTACT:

Please direct media inquiries to:

Bill Bongiorno
Blue Chip Public Relations, Inc.
914-882-5594
www.bluechippr.com
[email protected]

SOURCE: Backend Benchmarking

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