Since the financial crisis, new, innovative online investment platforms have begun to offer financial advice to hundreds of thousands of customers. Many of these companies offer advanced portfolio designs using low-cost investments such as exchange traded funds (ETFs), automatic rebalancing and tax loss harvesting — and charge substantially lower fees than traditional investment advisers. This has been a recipe for rapid growth among leading new online investment advisers. Regulators have taken notice, and on March 15, 2016, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority released a new report on online investment advice.
Click here to read this article, in which SRZ special counsel Christopher H. Giampapa discusses the implications of FINRA’s guidance, which affects both new online advisers and new offerings from traditional asset managers.