Everything You Need to Know About This New Fintech Disruptor - Before You Make a Move

I've been telling you for most of 2016 that financial technology, or fintech, is changing the investing and trading landscape.

One of the most profound fintech disruptors is the creation of automated investment services, more commonly known as "robo-advisors."

The idea of automating investment services was the brainchild of a handful of millennial-focused fintech entrepreneurs, most of whom are millennials themselves.

With their general aversion to traditional fee-based advisory services, their experience of living through the tech-wreck of 2000 and the 2008 market shellacking, their comfort and trust in computers and technology, millennials (the generation born or coming of age between 1982 and 2000) were presumed to be the perfect audience for robo-advisory services.

fintechSure enough, assets under management by robots (and their human helpers) exploded into the billions this year.

But millennials aren't the only group who are enamored with these low-cost, automated investment services. They're catching on with lots of investors.

If you're not one of those investors, today, I'm going show you how robo-advisors work and what they cost, as well as the pitfalls associated with this newfangled investing horizon.

Let's get started...

Low Fees Are a Huge Incentive

Automated investment services aren't hard to understand, on the surface at least.

Basically, you fill out online "paperwork" including questions about your age, maybe your education level and knowledge or investing experience, your financial situation, your goals, and other pertinent questions that traditional financial advisors or registered investment advisors should be asking you.

Don't Miss: Get the Best Investing Research Today to Grow Your Money

Then your data is run through algorithms that determine how much you should invest, what you should invest in, and when to reallocate or rebalance your portfolio.

If everyone was comfortable with robo-advisors there wouldn't be any need for additional human help. But a lot of investors entering into the robo-advisor world want some additional human contact.

So there are different product offerings available.

In fact, there are five so-called automated investment service account types:

  1. Direct-to-consumer accounts with no human interaction
  2. Direct-to-consumer accounts with limited advisor assistance
  3. Direct-to-consumer accounts with heavier advisor assistance
  4. Traditional services with in-house digital wealth management offerings
  5. Retirement-specific providers, including both direct-to-consumer and business-to-business providers

As far as fees, they range from low to super low.

Different providers offer different fee structures and several offer multiple structures.

The lowest fee I've seen is 25 basis points, or 25 one-hundredths of one percent. While that fee looks like a come-on fee because it's offered on accounts with less than $10,000 invested, annual fees vary. The basic fee model is an "assets under management" annual management fee, where you pay a fee based on how much money you have parked in your account.

A few services offer fixed annual fees. Some offer sliding scale fees, where the more money you put into your account, the smaller the fee becomes. And most providers offer additional fee-based services if you want some hand-holding that doesn't involve a computer.

What Happens in a Crash?

[mmpazkzone name="in-story" network="9794" site="307044" id="137008" type="4"]

While low fees are a huge plus when it comes to actual returns, they aren't everything.

Robo-advisory services don't cut the mustard for me when it comes to things like:

  1. Really determining individual client profiles and preferences that don't fit into the "buckets" used to channel your money into algorithms flooded with other supposedly likeminded investors
  2. Determining financial goals, expectations of investment return, diversification, and rebalancing plans based on rapidly changing markets and changing personal circumstances
  3. Determining the correct investment mix for you based on your expectations for markets, including equities, bonds, commodities, global exposure, and other asset classes

Besides the mechanical approach to dumping investors into buckets, I see potential problems on the robo-advisor horizon because they presently don't require any fiduciary duty standards or other securities law safeguards that apply to human advisors.

When it comes to robo-advisory services, it's unclear if fiduciary duty laws even apply.

The truth is robo-advisors are not free from conflicts of interest, they may not meet "a high standard of care," may not provide "completely" personalized investment advice, and may not fulfill other fiduciary standards that a traditional advisor would have to meet.

That scares me.

But that's only the beginning of what scares me.

No one has any idea how robo-advisors will perform in a market downturn or crash because the huge growth of automated services occurred after the 2008 market crash.

Well, not no one. I have a very good idea about what will happen.

And of course there's the question of Internet security and cyber hacking, as well as potential algorithmic issues where automatic trading algos could go rogue within robo-advisor portfolios.

There are serious pitfalls to robo-advisory services that providers never tell you about.

I'm going to tell you about the worst of them next week.

This Stock Is About to Skyrocket: This tiny $5 company just passed each of the seven benchmarks in this secret stock-picking method. Learn how to get in before its revenue surges an estimated 4,709%. Read more...

Follow Shah on Facebook and Twitter.

About the Author

Shah Gilani boasts a financial pedigree unlike any other. He ran his first hedge fund in 1982 from his seat on the floor of the Chicago Board of Options Exchange. When options on the Standard & Poor's 100 began trading on March 11, 1983, Shah worked in "the pit" as a market maker.

The work he did laid the foundation for what would later become the VIX - to this day one of the most widely used indicators worldwide. After leaving Chicago to run the futures and options division of the British banking giant Lloyd's TSB, Shah moved up to Roosevelt & Cross Inc., an old-line New York boutique firm. There he originated and ran a packaged fixed-income trading desk, and established that company's "listed" and OTC trading desks.

Shah founded a second hedge fund in 1999, which he ran until 2003.

Shah's vast network of contacts includes the biggest players on Wall Street and in international finance. These contacts give him the real story - when others only get what the investment banks want them to see.

Today, as editor of Hyperdrive Portfolio, Shah presents his legion of subscribers with massive profit opportunities that result from paradigm shifts in the way we work, play, and live.

Shah is a frequent guest on CNBC, Forbes, and MarketWatch, and you can catch him every week on Fox Business's Varney & Co.

Read full bio