Betterment Rolls Out 401(k) Plans for Advisors
Users of Betterment for Advisors will be able to offer the retirement plans to their business clients.
Betterment is branching out again, this time connecting two institutional offerings. The robo-advisor now offers advisors using the Betterment for Advisors platform the ability to offer 401(k) plans to their business clients through its Betterment for Business platform.
For the service, Advised 401(k)s, Betterment acts as the plan’s 3(38) investment manager by selecting, managing and monitoring investments — which consist of low-cost ETFs covering about a dozen asset classes.
In addition, Betterment will forward advisors their associated fees for the retirement plan each quarter and tackle related compliance and fiduciary tasks.
Plus, advisors can use the platform to invite individual plan participants to become general clients of their firm outside the 401(k) plan offering using an email feature.
Betterment’s latest offering comes two months after Empowerment, the nation’s second-largest retirement services provider, said it was buying Personal Capital, a rival digital advisory service that uses human advisors, in a $1 billion transaction.
About a year ago, Betterment — which works with about $21 billion in assets — introduced its savings and checking platform, initially offering a relatively high-yielding FDIC-insured savings account along with a waiting list for its checking account.
Betterment Checking opened to the general public in April, and in July, the firm introduced Cash Goals, which lets retail investor clients and end clients of Betterment for Advisors separate their cash reserves into different buckets tied to specific financial goals.
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