"Wealthfront's financial planning is delivered solely through software instead of people, allowing the company to easily scale the advice without charging for it," the company says. (Image: Thinkstock)
Wealthfront, the second largest independent robo-advisor, has launched a free financial planning service available to anyone who downloads the Wealthfront app.
The app uses the same underlying financial advice engine available to current Wealthfront clients, called Path, which can aggregate data from all financial accounts belonging to an individual, then analyze the data to advise on goals such as saving for a home, college or retirement.
"We realized we needed to get our financial planning service into more hands after we found engagement with Path is directly correlated to clients saving more of their income," said Dan Carroll, co-founder of Wealthfront, in a statement. "Wealthfront clients who use Path are saving four times more than the average American every year."
The app, like Wealthfront's fee-based service, targets millennials, though anyone can use it. "Our clients are millennials," spokeswoman Kate Wauck told ThinkAdvisor. "They grew up digitally native and want to consume all services through their phone … It's why we solely build services that are automated."
Path uses artificial intelligence techniques like machine learning to develop its advice. If an individual is interested in buying a home, for example, it will use a person's location and Zillow housing data plus their net worth, credit score and debt-to-income ratio to estimate the size of the mortgage they can qualify for.
David Goldstone, research analyst at Backend Benchmarking, which produces The Robo Report, said Wealthfront's free financial planning app is "another step in the democratization of financial services," which continues a "trend of robo-advisors challenging the value proposition of traditional financial advisors."
Indeed, Wealthfront's Carroll notes in his statement, "Americans desperately need access to financial planning and advice and it shouldn't be reserved for the wealthy behind a paywall."
