Should You Replace Your Financial Advisor With A “Robo” Advisor? Here Are the Pros & Cons (+2K Views)

 
You input your information, they output the data.  It’s all automated.  They often don’t know you, they don’t know your feelings, your family, your personal needs, goals, precise risk tolerance, etc.  This is a big problem from a financial planning and portfolio construction perspective.  It’s great to cut fees, but we shouldn’t be willing to reduce the quality of our financial plans just for a low fee advisory service.  The pure robo advisor is a step backwards in this sense.  It puts costs ahead of quality.

For instance, I ran through a “risk profile” on one of the major robo advisor sites using VERY conservative inputs (elderly, low income, no risk tolerance, etc) and the base output was a 42% risk asset allocation (stocks and commodities).  That’s madness in my view.  The most conservative portfolio output in this scenario would have lost 20-25% in a year like 2008.  That’s terrible profiling of a client but this is what happens when you take the human element completely out of the picture.  You get reduced to a number in a computer algorithm and there’s no telling if that algorithm actually gets your profile right.  In this case, it looks woefully lacking. The better solution here is a combination of the two.  I hope improved technology can be combined with the human quality of the necessities of a good financial plan.

The best robo advisors won’t truly automate their services, but will utilize the strengths of technology WITH good advisors to enhance the quality of the output.  As Erik Brynjolfsson says – we need to work WITH the machines, not against them.  The automated services, in an attempt to cut out the middleman entirely, have actually risked creating a model that is so simple that it actually misleads the client into designing a portfolio that may not be ideal for them.

This isn’t terribly shocking.  Wall Street has been hiring mathematicians and building computer algorithms for decades.

Most of the big Automated Advisory Services are using Modern Portfolio Theory and Efficient Market Hypothesis to construct portfolios so they’re using flawed concepts like the Efficient Frontier and its nebulous concept of “risk” as standard deviation to construct portfolios.  The results, as expected, are not promising when properly benchmarked.

To analyze this, I went into the two largest and most well known Automated Investment Services (Betterment and WealthFront) and ran through their basic risk profiles.  When I say “basic” I mean a few questions, which, to be honest, is deficient when assessing someone’s risk profile.  Risk profiling is a process I generally spend DAYS assessing for clients since it’s one of the most important elements of portfolio construction.  Not only do most clients have no idea what financial “risk” actually is, but they don’t understand how to properly connect the dots to an asset allocation plan because they’ve had the concepts of MPT and EMH jammed down their throats for the last 25 years.

Risk profile questionnaires are a fine starting point for building an understanding of risk tolerance, but they’re never enough because they’re necessarily incomplete and 95% of clients don’t understand what risk is and don’t understand how it relates to the portfolio…  A robot using standard deviation as “risk” and asking you 5 or 6 vague questions…can’t break down these complexities on its own...This is the problem with an automated service – you’re just a number in their algorithm and your output is likely to represent something that may or may not resemble who you actually are.

I went in and ran some quantitative analysis on some of these portfolio outputs [and, because,] you can actually see what portfolios they’ll build for you, I was able to back-test the actual portfolios using a full market cycle and the actual funds they recommend.

I ran the analysis using all the various risk profiles, but the outputs were all generally pretty close because the cookie cutter process they’re implementing is not very sophisticated and their reliance of MPT outputs [is] something that pretty much always looks like a variation of the same buy and hold portfolio (i.e., the actual weighting towards risk assets like stocks and commodities is usually in the 40%+ range and even higher when you consider how that variance contributes to what they’re defining as “risk”.

In other words, because stocks and commodities are more volatile than bonds, generally by several magnitudes, the “risk asset” portion of the portfolio is actually much riskier than a 40% risk asset allocation would lead one to believe).

In WealthFront’s aggressive output, the high risk investor is invested in a portfolio that results in a 90/5/5 portfolio (stocks/bonds/commodities). If you run this portfolio against a simple 3 fund allocation using the Vanguard Total Stock Index, Vanguard Total Bond Index and the GSCI Commodity Index at a similar 90/5/5 weighting, the numbers show that their “optimal” allocation is actually leading to portfolio degradation.  The robo advisor output increases your risk and reduces your return by generating a 20.32 standard deviation, annualized returns of 3.94% and a zero Sharpe Ratio.  The simple 3 fund alternative, on the other hand, generates a 6.47% return, 18.15 standard deviation and 0.36 Sharpe ratio over the same period.   In other words, this portfolio takes more risk, generates a lower return AND charges you a premium for it.In the case of Betterment...when properly benchmarked and risk adjusted, there also was no value added over a standard low fee aggregate index.

(Figure 1 – WealthFront’s Aggressive portfolio vs the S&P 500)

The most conservative output generates the same results.   On WealthFront, this “risk profile” outputs a 37/58/5 allocation (stocks/bonds/commodities) creating a portfolio that generates a 4.98% return, 9.0 standard deviation and 0.38 Sharpe Ratio over the most recent market cycle.  If you compare this to a simple cookie cutter 3 fund index using the Vanguard Total Stock Index, Vanguard Total Bond and GSCI Commodity Index you again see portfolio degradation.  In this case, the simple 3 fund portfolio generates a 5.77% return, 8.08 standard deviation and a 0.7 Sharpe Ratio.  The robo advisor is trying to sell the concept of “diversification” by picking funds more specifically than a simple broad index and in doing so they’re actually creating a portfolio that hurts your results.

What’s going on here is that the Automated Services are:

• actually “picking” funds inside of aggregates (If they were true adherents to Burton Malkiel’s Random Walk theory they’d recommend the Vanguard Total Stock Index and the Vanguard Total Bond Aggregate, apply the proper risk tolerance and weightings and call it a day.  Of course, if they did this most of their clients would turn around and ask why they need the robo advisor middleman when Vanguard can handle the two funds for them without the added fee) such as a municipal bond holding for the bond position, calling it “optimal allocation” and then underperforming the aggregate – which is exactly what a pure indexer would expect,
• basically selling a tactical asset allocation approach as being better than a true indexing approach and then calling it a true indexing approach as part of their marketing plan and
  
• then they benchmark it relative to a high fee active manager and call their portfolio “optimal” or claim it generates “additional returns”.  I don’t like that one bit.    

4)  Beware of the Robo Advisor “additional return” claims.  

I found it quite alarming how some of the robo advisors calculated their “additional returns” they advertise.  You can see these claims on the front of just about any of their websites.  They generally claim anywhere from 4-5% in “additional” gains.

• First of all, these firms are using index funds to construct portfolios so the claim of 4-5% additional returns should be an instant red flag.  The S&P 500 has averaged a real return of about 6% since 1925.  No index fund implementation is coming close to DOUBLING that figure no matter how fancy their algorithms are so some basic common sense tells us that these “additional return” claims look dubious.
• In establishing the claim of “additional returns” the Robo Advisors misrepresent their benchmarks by comparing their allocations to active mutual funds or by citing studies using active management.  THIS IS NOT PROPERLY BENCHMARKED.  Of course, if you compare an index fund to an active mutual fund charging 1-2% per year then you can claim “additional” returns, but I have never seen anyone benchmark their portfolios relative to an active manager.  The proper benchmark is a highly correlated passive index of equal weightings but the Robo Advisors don’t do that comparison because then you’d see the results I posted above, which actually show that their results are worse than Vanguard’s most basic allocations.

Let’s look at this in more detail though.  What you see on the Robo Advisor sites are claims that look something like the following:

Get Additional Returns with Robo Advisor XYZ:

1. Passive Investing +1.25%
2. Index Funds Over Mutual Funds +2.1%
3. Optimal/Better Diversification +0.5-1.4%
4. Automated Rebalancing +0.45%
5. Tax Aware Allocation +0.6%
6. Tax Loss Harvesting +1%
7. Better Behavior +1.25%

Total Additional Returns: 4-5%

This is well constructed marketing and little more:

1. Passive investing and avoiding high fee mutual funds will likely increase the return for the average investor.  No one benchmarks portfolios relative to a high fee active manager so let’s just ignore claims about generating 1-2% increased returns from this.
2. The optimal allocation claims are dubious as I showed above and it’s probable that this figure is not just overstated, but potentially NEGATIVE.
3. Any automated re-balancing is pretty standard and  not necessarily a value add.
4. The “tax aware” allocation is something anyone can find on the internet via a simple Google search.
5. The value of the tax loss harvesting is probably overstated.
6. The claim about “better behavior” assumes an active portfolio management style.

In other words, the 4-5% “additional return” claim is only true if:

• you’re doing just about everything wrong with your portfolio,
• you don’t have an advisor of any type or
• you don’t have access to the vast online resources for do-it-yourselfers.

Conclusion

There’s a lot of positives that are coming out of the Robo Advisor disruption.  I hope that doesn’t get lost in this message.  We’re likely to see:

• increased automation,
• lower fees and
• fewer suboptimal advisors.  

That’s fantastic news, but I think you have to also approach their services with some skepticism.

• will never replace a good financial planner because your financial plan can’t be whittled down to a set of numbers without some personal analysis.  There’s simply no avoiding the human element there.  It takes more than an algorithm to understand a human being’s mind and feelings,
• overstates the benefits, in my opinion.  I would not expect these services to generate “additional returns” relative to a well constructed passive index fund strategy.  In fact, they’re very likely to underperform after their extra fees.

I would follow a basic rule of thumb here.

• If you have a small portfolio or rather basic financial needs then the Robo Advisor can be a fine way to automate a process and better organize your finances.  Smaller portfolios generally don’t pay any fees using these services so that’s a good fit.
• If, however, you’re a wealthy investor with sophisticated finances then I’d be hesitant to skimp on the quality of service in favor of what appears to be a low fee marketing pitch and,
• if you’re a sophisticated do-it-yourselfer then there’s probably not much a Robo Advisor can do that you can’t already do at Vanguard for a low fee on your own. Paying a management fee for a suboptimal buy and hold portfolio just doesn’t make much sense.

Personally, I am always in favor of a DIY approach and that’s what I try to help people better achieve through my business and Portfolio Review process, but I understand that it’s not for everyone and depending on your personal needs a Robo Advisor could be appropriate for you.

Let’s keep things in perspective here:

• Paying a Robo Advisor 15-25 bps for a simple, automated portfolio approach is 10X better than paying an actively managed closet index fund manager ON TOP of wirehouse style brokerage fees so let’s all applaud the improvement in the industry.
• Unfortunately, however, I think there’s a lot of work to be done on improving the Robo Advisor model before it becomes useful to high net worth and more sophisticated clients.  Vanguard seems to be on to something with their direction and I think the pure Robo Advisor firms are going to have to realize that people are more important than robots in financial management.

As of right now, there are simply too many problems in the underlying business model and portfolio construction process to be useful for anyone with a moderately high level of sophistication and planning needs so I am extremely hesitant to recommend these services over a reasonably priced alternative.

Editor’s Note: The author’s views and conclusions in the above article are unaltered and no personal comments have been included to maintain the integrity of the original post. Furthermore, the views, conclusions and any recommendations offered in this article are not to be construed as an endorsement of such by the editor.

*http://pragcap.com/should-you-use-an-automated-investment-service

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