that is written like an advertisement . please help improve it by removing promotional content and inappropriate external links and by adding encyclopedic content written from a neutral point of view . december 2013 learn how and when to remove this template message betterment type private industry investment services founded 2008 headquarters new york city new york united states key people jon stein founder ceo eli broverman co founder coo anthony schrauth chief product officer dustin lucien vp of engineering products financial services asset management portfolio management trust services aum 5 billion 1 website www.betterment.com betterment also known as betterment.com is an online investment adviser registered by the u.s. securities and exchange commission based in new york new york . betterment provides investment advice and diversified fully automated investment management to customers for less than the typical cost of a traditional financial adviser or wealth manager . all transactions occur online it is an execution only service . betterment does not have brokerage sales representatives or advisers . 2 betterment is headquartered in new york city and has received funding from menlo ventures bessemer venture partners and anthemis group . 3 notable angel investors include thomas lehrman jason finger and andy dunn . due to the overall customer experience including ease of use and emphasis on design betterment has been called the apple of finance . 4 contents 1 business model 2 products and services 3 engineering 4 concerns and controversies 5 research 6 references business model edit betterment is an automated goal based investing service . betterment invests in a portfolio of passive index tracking equity and fixed income exchange traded funds etfs 5 and offers both taxable and tax advantaged investment accounts including traditional and roth individual retirement accounts iras . betterment s core portfolio optimization incorporates insights of modern portfolio theory the black litterman model and behavioral asset management . modern portfolio theory mpt relies on diversification and asset allocation to attempt maximum portfolio return for an amount of given risk . black litterman enables passive asset allocation by using world market capitalizations to attempt to estimate expected returns . behavioral asset management focuses on investor returns and attempts to optimize the returns an investor achieves including minimizing potential market timing behavior . betterment has no investment minimums for customers . account fees are tiered between 0.15 % and 0.35 % of aggregate assets managed across all a customers goals . customers with accounts of 100 000 or more receive pricing of 0.15 % . products and services edit betterment provides both financial advice and investment management to customers . betterment s software invests and rebalances accounts automatically using cash inflows and dividends . betterment uses software and algorithms to track whether or not a customer is likely to reach a specific goal . betterment produces content pertaining to diversification retirement taxes financial advice and behavioral economics . betterment distributes this content on its proprietary blog through third party publications such as the wall street journal social media channels and in client communication emails . in october 2014 betterment launched a b2b offering called betterment institutional . in july 2016 betterment announced its assets under management aum had surpassed 5 billion becoming the first robo advisor to reach that mark . 6 engineering edit betterment s product offering consists of two facets a consumer facing responsive interface and the core trading application . the interface portion is backed by a java spring mvc stack running in the apache tomcat container and frontend by an in house javascript framework built on top of marionette.js and backbone.js . trading is written primarily in java and scala leveraging xignite web services for real time pricing information . concerns and controversies edit on june 24 2016 betterment suspended trading for 2.5 hours without communicating with its users . as a result customers raised concerns . following this incident a state regulator also raised concerns over betterment s actions these customers were put at a great disadvantage said massachusetts secretary of the commonwealth william galvin . 7 the unexpected trading suspension also caused concern among financial advisers using betterment through the betterment for advisors platform . advisers like eric roberge grew concerned over the trading suspension as it prevented him from updating client portfolios i don t feel comfortable with someone else telling me what i can and can not do on clients behalf said mr. roberge . 8 other advisers expressed concerns about betterment s decision regarding communication and questioned why decision was not communicated to the customers and financial advisors causing lingering questions around betterment s policies especially those regarding trading suspension . 9 research edit in addition to its standard product offerings betterment s data analysis team released an open source research project written in python and pandas analyzing mutual fund data from the center for research in security prices crsp . led by alex benke cfp the team co authored a whitepaper with financial planner richard a. ferri cfa founder of portfolio solutions . 10 the report identified four key findings which support investing using an all index fund portfolio advanced portfolios holding ten asset classes showed index fund outperforming comparable actively managed portfolios 90 % of the time . diversification of active managers within asset classes holding two or more funds of the same asset class reduced active portfolio performance dramatically with the passive strategy outperforming multiple active funds 90 % of the time . increased holding period steadily increased the chance of index fund portfolio outperformance . low fee actively managed fund portfolios did not meaningfully increase the chance of success . references edit verhage julie 14 july 2016 . robo adviser betterment hits the 5 billion mark . bloomberg . retrieved 14 july 2016 . betterment strives for better investing . international business times . 17 october 2011 . retrieved 27 december 2011 . how we got funded betterment . 30 april 2013 . inc.com this startup captured 200 million of people s savings by turning financial advice into an algorithm . quartz . 4 june 2013 . retrieved 19 july 2013 . rodriguez josh . betterment review . modest money . how does it all work verhage julie 14 july 2016 . robo adviser betterment hits the 5 billion mark . bloomberg . retrieved 14 july 2016 . tergesen anne ; wursthorn michael 2016 07 02 . robo adviser betterment stokes concern over brexit trading halt . wall street journal . issn 0099 9660 . retrieved 2016 09 30 . tergesen anne ; wursthorn michael 2016 07 02 . robo adviser betterment stokes concern over brexit trading halt . wall street journal . issn 0099 9660 . retrieved 2016 09 30 . after trading halt betterment suffers its own brexit shock . retrieved 2016 09 30 . betterment crsp whitepaper . june 2013 . retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title betterment investment service & oldid 742018343 categories financial services companies of the united stateshidden categories articles with a promotional tone from december 2013all articles with a promotional tonepages using infobox company with unsupported parameters navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial 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