Adam Nash, the CEO of robo-advisor Wealthfront, thinks it is highly unlikely Google and Apple will become competitors to financial advisors.
Despite the popularity of their brands and technology with millennials, the two companies will eschew financial services and focus their energies on a wealth of other opportunities that hold greater promise, said Nash, who was speaking at an Investment Company Institute panel on millennials.
While Google and Apple may be staying away, Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch is poised to make a new marketing push to lure the savings of these 70 million strong 18- to 34-year-olds.
Within a couple of weeks, the brokerage will be rolling out new impact investing products, which it says are aimed at a socially conscious generation, according to Andrew Sieg, Bank of America/Merrill Lynch’s global wealth and retirement solutions chief, who appeared on the panel with Nash.
Sieg said Merrill has been hiring 3,500 young advisors with a different emphasis on training. That training will shift from a reliance on portfolio theory to a focus on a wide range of quality-of-life issues important to young adults.
“We’re teaching advisors not to view clients just as piles of money, but to think about their customers’ careers, families, philanthropy and how they spend their leisure time as well,” said Sieg.
To justify their fees, he said, advisors need to demonstrate they offer value across a broader part of their clients’ lives.
He thinks the socially responsible investment products soon to be launched by the bank will appeal to millennials because these clients don’t care about beating investment return benchmarks as much as reaching life goals.