Want half a share of Apple, or bitcoin alongside protective puts? The investing, trading and wealth management firms on Forbes’ Fintech 50 2019 offer more than just the services once exclusive to big banks and traditional financial firms. They’re tapping into markets by merging new tricks with the old.
Take, for example, the maturing roboadvisor market as it embraces the human side of advising. Pioneer Betterment added human advisors to its mix in 2017 and last year introduced the ability for investors to tailor their automated portfolio allocations. Further evidence of the hybrid-advisor appeal: Digital wealth management platform Personal Capital returns to the Fintech 50 list after announcing an Atlanta office in September to bulk up its team of more than 200 financial advisors, and its free online financial dashboard now claims almost 2 million users.
Meanwhile, the new generation of online brokers, which has largely forgone commission-based trading, gained millions of users in 2018. List-staple Robinhood doubled its customer base in the past year to more than 6 million, and newcomer Stash debuts on the list with 3 million users–around 80% of which the firm says are first-time investors. Expect increasingly diversified offerings in this space: Both Stash and Robinhood have announced banking plays due out later this year, in the form of a Visa-equipped debit account for the former and a cash management program for the latter.
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