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DENVER – With more than 2,000 advisors in attendance at Schwab annual Impact conference, so-called robo advisors came under direct fire.
The long-term viability of the first wave of online automated RIAs was openly questioned at the conference’s general session by Walt Bettinger, Schwab’s president and CEO.
There is “no way” online advisory firms will replace advisors who work directly with clients, Bettinger asserted.
Robo advisors merely provide the “three easiest” services – asset allocation, automatic rebalancing and tax-loss harvesting – Bettinger maintained. Anyone who thought that type of offering would replace “all the other value-added services” of traditional advisors was “extraordinarely naïve,” he said.
BEWARE THE BEAR
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