Betterment rolls out a prepackaged tech stack for RIAs

Betterment is taking another step toward its mission to rapidly grow its adviser-focused business line throughout the year.

The robo-adviser announced Tuesday it is tag-teaming with fellow fintechs RIA in a Box, RightCapital and Wealthbox to offer new and breakaway registered investment advisers on its platform a prepackaged tech stack. 

The four fintechs create the RIA Tech Suite, which is designed to appeal to new RIAs looking for a predetermined tech stack that includes tax technology, compliance software, financial planning tools and a client relationship management platform, said Jon Mauney, general manager of Betterment for Advisors. 

While the RIA Tech Suite will likely attract new advisers or breakaways, the tech stack is also available for the 2,000 advisers already on the Betterment platform, Mauney said. According to Betterment’s estimates, by adopting two or more of the services available in the suite, the RIA firm will receive discounts that could save them up to $3,100 in their first year. 

However, each tech provider is a part of the tech suite and has its own discretion to extend discounts to existing clients. Discounts will be made on a case-by-case basis, depending on the relationship, Mauney said. 

Offering a prepackaged tech suite with the selected service providers was decided because the majority of Betterment advisers are already adopting tools from RIA in a Box, RightCapital, and Wealthbox, Mauney said. 

“So we wanted  to extend that value to new firms that are maybe still searching for the right options in order to run their practice,” he said. There is also room for cross-sell opportunities for all the tech providers involved. 

Betterment is leveraging an integration approach with wealthtech providers versus building these tools itself as the robo-adviser continues to ramp up their adviser services platform, Mauney said. “We have our niche and we’re going to keep leaning into that,” he said. 

Betterment has made it clear under the leadership of new CEO Sarah Levy that it is prioritizing the growth of its adviser business as competition continues to heat up in the robo-advice space. 

New entrants like  Goldman Sachs’ Marcus Invest and Stash’s Smart Portfolios entered the playing field this year while some robos have fallen flat. Earlier this month Principal Financial Group Inc. decided to shut down RobustWealth. 

Betterment, for one, has experienced skyrocketing growth as the robo-adviser has now grown its assets under management to $31 billion and serves 650,000 clients, according to a company spokesperson. 

Future integrations to build out the RIA Tech Suite are likely to come as Betterment “continues to signal to the market that we’re taking [adviser services] very seriously,” Mauney said. 

“We see an opportunity to potentially integrate deeper with the current providers and surface some of those things in our own platform,” he said. “That’s not necessarily stuff that's coming right around the corner, but as we continue to assess the success of this and the adoption, those are definitely things we would continue to consider.”

Betterment’s RIA Tech Suite launches one month after Betterment kicked off its mission to rapidly grow its adviser-focused business line throughout the year with the roll out of Co-Pilot, a command center that aggregates a to-do list of client needs an adviser should address.