Digital Investment Advisor
Qapital
Last updated:
Nov 15, 2024
Provided by
Qapital, LLC.
Life Admin Area
Personal finance
Qapital is digital financial advisor app focused on goals-based saving and investing. At its core is a robo-advisor platform and a high-yield savings account, but it provides a flat subscription fee, unlike other major robo-advisors. Qapital's magic is its ability to let you plan out your financial goals and invest in discrete buckets for each, providing the right investment mix for how to reach each goal. This goal-based approach to finance fits well with anticipatory approaches to limit life admin.
The automation of investing toward multiple goals at once is a huge time saver, and the ability to devise and store your financial goals in one place can reduce the effort of thinking through them. Qapital has a flat monthly fee, which means as you grow your money, it won't cost you any more than it already does. Compared to other robo-advisors, this may mean they're incentivized to focus on what you find helpful, rather than focusing on bringing as many assets onto the platform as possible.
By setting financial goals — anticipated events in life where you'll need to use money — you're able to pay yourself for the future (i.e. save). Researchers at Morningstar have found that making tangible goals can have a positive psychological impact leading to more successful wealth growth, compared to other methods.
Robo-advisors automate stock/bond trading and propose an expert-selected portfolio of funds. They offer standardized investment advice, removing the possible inconsistencies of human advisors, usually following a standard of Modern Portfolio Theory.
Normal banks are chartered by a state or federal government, but neobanks aren’t — they are tech platforms that partner with banks or intermediaries to offer banking services, which means there are some detailed caveats to how they manage your money.
Started in 2013, Qapital hasn't grown in assets or users nearly as quickly as other robo-advisors, like Betterment or Wealthfront (the two largest in the category). Instead, Qapital has super-served its dedicated user base, which prizes its goal-based approach. Its monthly subscription fee makes it responsive to its users, rather than focused exclusively on driving assets onto the platform.
Qapital simplifies saving with an intuitive, automated approach centered on users identifying and setting up their financial goals. Key benefits that really help save on life admin time and effort are:
Betterment Holdings, Inc. is a financial technology company providing automated investment management and financial advisory services. The company's primary service, Betterment, offers robo-advisory services for personal investing, retirement accounts, and cash management with an emphasis on low-cost, automated portfolio management.
Also reviewed on Wayshaping ->Wealthfront is a digital investment advisor, and helped established the robo-advisor space along with Betterment. Wealthfront offers brokerage services and provides its own fund, which decrease its level of independence as an advisory service and introduce some conflicts of interest, relative to other robo-advisors.
Also reviewed on Wayshaping ->Ally is an established online-only bank (Ally Bank) and robo-advisor platform (Ally Invest) that has long led with offering high-yield interest rates. Originally, established as a bank under General Motors, Ally was spun out after the financial crisis and became an early leader in online banking. It still has a large auto loan business.
Also reviewed on Wayshaping ->