Acorns is a US micro-investing app that invests spare change in ETFs; it has announced the appointment of former Wealthfront CEO, Adam Nash, to its board of directors; the firm also says it is researching behavioral economics as part of its marketing strategy and has added Shlomo Benartzi, professor and co-chair of the Behavioral Decision-Making Group at the University of California, Los Angeles, to its board. Source
In an interview with Business Insider Acorns CEO Noah Kerner talked about the investment app’s success to date and how he see the company moving forward; the company has seen strong growth with 2.2 million US accounts; the app allows users to invest spare change from purchases; the focus of the future is to try to get all households with income under $100K using the app. Source.
Most financial services firms look to educate users by having a blog or providing some links to resources; Acorns CEO Noah Kerner says the company wants to go further, they have their own online magazine, interviews with celebrities and provide financial how tos; they will also push content to you based upon how you use the app, trying to customize your experience; the big difference they see is when they combine education with the app experience, helping to move education beyond just reading articles. Source.
Acorns has partnered with personal financial management app Clarity Money; Acorns now has two million investment accounts with users investing spare change into customized investments; Clarity Money launched in 2016 and is an app for personal finance advice and expense and savings management; users of both platforms benefit from the partnership with Clarity Money customers able to use Acorns' automated investing features and Acorns' investors able to sync their Acorns investment account to their Clarity Money dashboard. Source
Acting CFPB Head Mick Mulvaney said he thought the payday lending rule was too far along for the agency to change but that he supports a congressional rollback; the Congressional Review Act gives Congress 60 days to nullify a regulation; Mr. Mulvaney is currently involved in a dispute over whether or not he can run the agency on an interim basis and he said he anticipates staying for 5 to 7 months. Source.
