In competition with the poor values of financial advisors and the high minimum investment amounts with troublesome fees, WiseBanyan is a low-cost financial robo-advisor that offers a new approach to investing.
WiseBanyan offers a personalized touch by pairing their clients with a personal finance expert. In addition, no minimum portfolio balance is required. So, novice and skilled investors can start investing as soon as possible. Automation and simplification is their motto.
They are similar to Betterment without the fees for taxable accounts. The only time you’ll have to pay a fee is if you invest in an IRA.
When you get started, your money is invested to purchase a portfolio of ETFs while managing the dividends and rebalancing according to what you want.
As a side note, WiseBanyan is SIPC insured and registered with the financial regulatory agencies SEC and FINRA. Your investments are not FDIC insured. Instead, Apex Clearing Corp., their cleaning firm, holds your investments.
Read on to see if it’s a wise idea to invest your money with WiseBanyan.
WiseBanyan Robo-Advisor Information
- Direct Link to Offer
- Account Type: Taxable, Roth IRA, Traditional IRA, Rollover IRA, SEP IRA
- Availability: Nationwide
- Expiration Date: None
- Online Trades: $0 per trade
- Hard Inquiry: Unknown
- Annual Fee: None. Basic services are free.
- Additional Requirements: None
- Closing Account Fee: None
How WiseBanyan Works
There is a $1 minimum to open a WiseBanyan account. They don’t charge an annual fee for their basic service. However, you’ll be charged annual fees for the ETFs they recommend.
Answer basic investing questions to help calculate your risk tolerance and financial goals. If you need to, you can adjust your risk score and other financial choices after you open your new account.
Your money is automatically invested into a diversified portfolio based on your risk score.
You will also be prompted to select the type of account you want to open — stocks, bonds, or anything else.
You can set up automatic contributions if the $10 minimum isn’t enough. Once your new account has been funded, WiseBanyan creates a diversified portfolio based on your answers to their questions.
WiseBanyan supports fractional shares, so all the money you deposit is invested and no cash balance will remain.
WiseBanyan Features
- Free management: Robo-advisors are meant to offer financial advice and management for much less than a human financial advisor. However, only a few offer completely free management services, regardless of account balance. WiseBanyan does this and makes money off of paid add-on products and premium services for tax-loss harvesting and customizing portfolios.
- $1 account minimum: Investment minimums are only $10. WiseBanyan buys fractional shares. This means, your money is invested immediately instead of sitting idle in cash until you’ve got enough to purchase full shares.
- Modern portfolio theory: WiseBanyan automatically creates a custom portfolio for you by asking a few questions. Then, the calculated risk score helps build a recommended portfolio of ETFs, to reflect the amount of risk you’re willing to accept. You can alter your risk scores, and the investment recommendations will automatically update to reflect the change.
- Portfolio Plus: For an additional $3 a month, this service lets you access dozens of additional ETFs and allows you to make completely custom portfolios or choose from an expanded list of pre-existing portfolios.
- Goals-based investing: Set up goals through “milestones.” Then, WiseBanyan will calculate a recommendation for how much should be invested toward that milestone. You can also adjust WiseBanyan’s recommended asset allocation for each milestone.
Conclusion
WiseBanyan is a robo-advisor service with no hidden charges. The basic service includes automatic portfolio rebalancing and a low minimum deposit.
Compared to many other robo-advisors featured on our best robo-advisors masterpost, they are fairly low-cost. However, you must pay a premium if you want to open an IRA.
If you’re not looking for an IRA and a free-to-use investing option, WiseBanyan is a good choice. It’s only $10 to get started and is great for beginners.
In addition, they has a tax-loss harvesting feature most robo-advisors don’t offer. So, check that out.
For those who are already well into the investing game, you may want to check out our full list of broker bonuses for all other investment option.