Blessed by the Potato

Back when robo-advisors were new — who are we kidding, for financial services they’re still new — people had lots of concerns about the new services. Chief amongst those concerns were whether investors’ money would be safe if/when one of the firms went under. We predicted that this would be a risk of inconvenience rather than a risk of losing real money: because of the custodian broker relationship, you would still have your assets somewhere (though those have their own risks), but the firm would no longer manage them. But if a firm went under, you wouldn’t lose your assets with them.

What happens if a firm goes out of business? Then the underlying investments — which are held at a “custodian” — can be transferred to another broker on your behalf. You can ask each firm about the details of their custodian arrangement, but as far as we were able to determine, every firm listed holds your investments at a custodian that is a member of IIROC.

So, aside from the usual risk of the investments themselves and completely unforseen events, investing with the relatively new robo-advisors should be no more risky than traditional means.

Well, we have our first robo-advisor failure! Planswell suddenly shut down operations this month, and we’re seeing those predictions play out in practice. Investors’ assets are still held at the custodian, and other than the inconvenience of having to move them and pay a transfer fee, nobody’s assets went up with the firm — the custodian brokerage relationship is working as predicted.

Planswell customers now have to figure out what to do with their assets. One choice is of course to learn to DIY and move to Questrade for ETFs or TD for TD e-series. Otherwise they can move to another robo-advisor if that’s what worked for them and still the right choice. Planswell is suggesting a few that use the same custodian (e.g. Justwealth and Wealthbar), which saves on transfer fees. Note though that if you ask and have enough assets to move, many firms will cover your transfer-out fees.

As for prognosticating, I’ve been surprised so firms have lasted as long as they have. I keep expecting a wave of consolidation — not necessarily abrupt closures like Planswell, but I’m surprised someone (the big banks and Wealthsimple are obvious acquirers) hasn’t been buying up the other firms. Dale has a post up on the slow growth of the robos which may add to the issues and stress in the future.