Betterment has announced its biggest round of financing yet. The largest independent robo-advisor, with nearly $4 billion in assets and more than 150,000 customers, has just closed on a $100 million round of funding led by the Swedish investment company Kinnevik. Other participants include Bessemer Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, Anthemis Group and Fransciso Partners, which are all previous investors in the company.
The latest round of financing is almost as large as the $105 million Betterment had raised previously in four other rounds of financing.
Jon Stein, Betterment's founder and CEO, told ThinkAdvisor the new financing "signals that more charges are afoot, more development is coming, especially for advisors."
He said Betterment will use the money "to build out more and better advice products" in its institutional platform for advisors as well as new products in its 401(k) platform, which launched in January.
Betterment wants to build "more personalization and customization" into client accounts and into dashboards for advisors, Stein explained. "We want to be our customers' central relationship and … ultimately our advisor clients' central relationship," said Stein, referring to the firm's two sets of clients – individuals and advisors.
Betterment currently has 200 firms as clients of its institutional platform. The exact number of advisors was not disclosed.