Betterment has announced a new service that will offer professional advice from certified financial planners for an additional fee; the firm has structured the new service in two tiers providing for annual and unlimited advice; the annual access will be charged an additional 40 basis points with a minimum investment required of $100,000; the unlimited access will charge 50 basis points and require a minimum of $250,000; the new offering will target high net worth clients however the company will continue to maintain its $0 minimum investment; it is expected that robo adviser services will evolve to a hybrid model providing both automated and human services; Vanguard and Schwab offer a hybrid model with human advice available by phone or video chat. Source
USA
Allen Webb of RiverNorth talks about the firm's marketplace lending fund; gives an overview of the portfolio selection criteria; talks about the fund's structure and some of the liquidity challenges presented by marketplace loans; says the firm is planning future webinars to educate investors on the fixed income investment.
PayPal's fourth quarter earnings release revealed a number of interesting developments for the company; the firm has been steadily growing its partnerships with e-commerce businesses which has helped increase the number of payment transactions per customer; in the fourth quarter PayPal reported 31.1 transactions per active customer which was an increase from 30.2 in the previous quarter and 27.5 in the comparable quarter; PayPal's CEO Dan Schulman has also discussed a new partnership with Amazon that would allow Amazon customers to pay for purchases with PayPal which would further support increases in its customer account activity. Source
