FinovateFall 2011 / Betterment

Presenter Profile:

How they describe themselves: Betterment is the simple and smart answer to the common question, “What should I do with my money?” We empower customers to invest for their goals in an optimal blend of stocks and bonds with minimal effort. We do this by making trade-offs clear, giving questionnaire-based advice, and allowing customers to see how others like them invest. Betterment is a set-it-and-forget-it, no pain, smart investment.

To make the investing process seamless and easy, we have built an end-to-end platform that links to a customer’s checking account for free transfers, manages and rebalances portfolios of ETFs, handles fractional share purchases, and more.

How they describe their product/innovation:
Betterment is committed to helping consumers make the right investing decisions to meet their financial goals. Our new goal based tool enables users to make smart, goal-based investment decisions. In keeping with Betterment’s easy and intuitive user experience, we’ve created a simple three step process that empowers users to invest towards specific goals.

Step 1 – A user identifies their goal (i.e. retirement, buy a house, vacation, etc.), when they want to reach this goal, and how much they will contribute towards this goal.

Step 2 – User selects short term risk tolerance for this particular goal, based on Betterment’s projections of likely return, potential upside and downside.

Step 3 – Users selects long term risk tolerance for this particular goal, based on Betterment’s projections.

After completing these three steps, the user receives a recommended portfolio allocation, and, can set their portfolio for this goal with just one click. Reaching future goals through investing is now faster and simpler than ever before!

Contacts:

Bus. Dev.: Eli Broverman, eli@betterment.com
Sales: Mary Biggins, mary@betterment.com
Press: Johanna Scott, johanna@betterment.com


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