These factors are particularly acute for most community banks that depend heavily on spread income and do not have the scale to absorb expense pressures as easily as their larger brethren. Further, many community banks are at a crossroad because their ROE consistently has fallen below the cost of capital, which in turn is forcing boards to consider strategic options like outright sales or potentially risky acquisition strategies to obtain scale.

In an ideal world, community banks could easily add fee businesses that are capital-light, such as wealth management and trust operations, to boost returns. By pairing traditional banking services with other financial services like wealth management, banks can obtain more touch points for customer relationships, enhance revenue, and potentially improve the bank’s valuation. While we have previously spoken about the potential benefits to community banks of acquiring or building out a traditional wealth management operation, we have not addressed emerging FinTech companies, like robo-advisors, that are focused on the wealth management space.

While there has been a race to partner and/or acquire robo-advisors by many of the larger asset managers and banks, there have also been some interesting partnerships with community banks. One such partnership struck is among Cambridge Savings Bank, a $3.5 billion bank located near Boston, and SigFig, a robo-advisor founded in 2007. While SigFig has relationships with UBS and Wells Fargo, its partnership with Cambridge Savings is notable because the two built a service called “ConnectInvest.“ When announced in the spring of 2016, the partnership was described as the “first automated investment service integrated and bundled directly into a retail bank’s product offerings in the U.S.” ConnectInvest, which is available to Cambridge’s customers digitally (mobile and website), “allows customers to easily open, fund, and manage an automated investment account tailored to their goals.” Cambridge’s customers are interested in the offering and have started using it. The goal is get up to 10% of its customer base using ConnectInvest.

With this example in mind, the remainder of this article offers an overview of the robo-advisory space for our community bank readers so that they may gain a better understanding of the key players and their service offerings and assess whether their bank could benefit from leveraging opportunities in this area.

An Overview of Robo-Advisors

Robo-advisors were noted by the CFA Institute as the FinTech innovation most likely to have the greatest impact on the financial services industry in the short-term (one year) and medium-term (five years). Robo-advisory has gained traction in the past several years as a niche within the FinTech industry by offering online wealth management tools powered by sophisticated algorithms that can help investors manage their portfolios at very low costs and with minimal need for human contact or advice. Technological advances that make the business model possible, coupled with a loss of consumer trust in the wealth management industry in the wake of the financial crisis, have created a favorable environment for robo-advisory startups to disrupt financial advisories, RIAs, and wealth managers. This growth is forcing traditional incumbents to confront the new entrants by adding the service via acquisition or partnership rather than dismiss it as a passing fad.

Robo-advisors have been successful for a number of reasons, though like many digital products low-cost, convenience, and transparency are common attributes.

• Low Cost. Automated, algorithm-driven decision-making greatly lowers the cost of financial advice and portfolio management.
• Accessible. As a result of the lowered cost of financial advice, advanced investment strategies are more accessible to a wider customer base.
• Personalized Strategies. Sophisticated algorithms and computer systems create personalized investment strategies that are highly tailored to the specific needs of individual investors.
• Transparent. Through online platforms and mobile apps, clients are able to view information about their portfolios and enjoy visibility in regard to the way their money is being managed.
• Convenient. Portfolio information and management becomes available on-demand through online platforms and mobile apps.

Consistent with the rise in consumer demand for robo-advisory, investor interest has grown steadily. While robo-advisory has not drawn the levels of investment seen in other niches (such as online lending platforms), venture capital funding of robo-advisories has skyrocketed from almost non-existent levels ten years ago to hundreds of millions of dollars invested annually the last few years. 2016 saw several notable rounds of investment into not only some of the industry’s largest and most mature players (including rounds of $100 million for Betterment and $75 million for Personal Capital), but also for innovative startups just getting off the ground (such as SigFig and Vestmark).

The table below provides an overview of the fee schedules, assets under management and account opening minimums for several of the larger robo-advisors. The robo-advisors are separated into three tiers. Tier I consists of early robo-advisory firms who have positioned themselves at the top of the industry. Tier II consists of more recent robo-advisory startups that are experiencing rapid growth and are ripe for partnership. Tier III consists of robo-advisory services of traditional players who have decided to build and run their own technology in-house.

As shown, account opening sizes and fee schedules are lower than many traditional wealth management firms. The strategic challenge for a number of the FinTech startups in Tiers I and II is generating enough AUM and scale to produce revenue sufficient to maintain the significantly lower fee schedules. This can be challenging since the cost to acquire a new customer can be significant and each of these startups has required significant venture capital funding to develop. For example, each of these companies has raised over $100 million of venture capital funding since inception.

Key Potential Effects of Robo-Advisory

We see five potential effects of robo-advisors entering the financial services landscape.

1. Fee pressure. Robo-advisors may be a niche area for the time being, but the emergence and success of a technology-driven solution that challenges an age-old business (wealth management) epitomizes what has long been associated with internet (and digital) delivery of services: faster, better, and cheaper.
2. The Democratization of Wealth Management. As a result of the low costs of robo-advisory services, new investors have been able to gain access to sophisticated investment strategies that, in the past, have only been available to high net worth, accredited investors.
3. Holistic Financial Life Management. As more people have access to financial advice through robo-advisors, traditional financial advisors are being forced to move away from return-driven goals for clients and pivot towards offering a more complete picture of a client’s financial well-being as clients save for milestones such as retirement, a child’s education, and a new house. This phenomenon has increased the differentiation pressure on traditional financial advisors and RIAs, as robo-advisors can offer a holistic snapshot in a manner that is comprehensive and easy to understand
4. Drivers of the Changing Role of the Traditional Financial Advisor. The potential shift away from return-driven goals could leave the role of the traditional financial advisor in limbo. This raises the question of what traditional wealth managers will look like going forward. One potential answer is traditional financial advisors will tackle more complex issues, such as tax and estate planning, and leave the more programmed decision-making to robo-advisors.
5. Build, Buy, Partner, or Wait and See. As the role of the financial advisor changes, traditional incumbents like community banks are faced with determining what they want their relationship with robo-advisory to look like. In short, incumbents are left with four options: build their own robo-advisory in-house, buy a startup and adopt its technology, create a strategic partnership with a startup, or stay in a holding pattern in regard to robo-advisory and continue business as usual.

Robo-advisory is an exciting development for wealth managers and offers opportunities potentially for bankers to expand or develop their offerings in this area. Similar to any other growth strategy, the goal will ultimately be for the bank to enhance profitability and shareholder value by adding desired customer services.

For those bankers who may want to add a robo-advisor to their wish list, the key question of whether to build, buy, or partner is a challenging one. We will be speaking at the annual Acquire or Be Acquired (AOBA) conference in January on the topic of how to develop a framework to better assess this question. Additionally, for those who may go the investment route via a minority investment or outright acquisition, we offer some perspective on how to value and structure investments in FinTech companies like robo-advisors. Given the vast array of FinTech companies emerging in different areas of financial services, it will be important for bankers to develop a framework for both assessing potential opportunities and focusing in on those that provide the greatest potential to enhance profitability and shareholder value. We will post our slide deck from our AOBA session and make it accessible to BankWatch readers in the first quarter of 2017, so stay tuned.

Additionally, we have a new book coming in the spring of 2017 – Creating Strategic Value Through Financial Technology. In this book, we illustrate the potential benefits of FinTech to banks, both large and small, so that they can gain a better understanding of FinTech and how it can create value for their shareholders and enhance the health and profitability of their institutions.

As always, please do not hesitate to contact us if we can help in any way.

This article originally appeared in Mercer Capital’s Bank Watch, January 2017. 

About the Author