Folio Investing is getting out of the retail brokerage business.
In a letter to its clients today, the custodian announced that it is discontinuing its service to do-it-yourself clients and transferring those accounts to Interactive Brokers.
“At this time, we’ve decided to focus on our core business of supporting investment advisors with technology, custodial, brokerage and other services,” said the letter. “This means we will no longer provide our services to self-directed investors.”
Self-directed investors will have Interactive Brokers accounts ready to use on January 14, 2021, unless they opt out of the transfer by contacting Folio by phone or e-mail no later than January 8, 2021.
One piece of technology self-directed investors will leave behind after the change is access to “Folios,” virtual baskets of investments that allowed users to separately track and rebalance subsets of securities within their accounts. They will also lose access to the “Ready-to-Go Folios,” pre-made portfolios of stocks and ETFs offered to clients. However, Interactive Brokers expects to add a similar feature in the first quarter of 2020.
In May of this year, Folio became the landing place for clients of Motif Investing, a digital service that allowed investors to access “motifs,” baskets of investments similar to Folios. Later in the same month, Folio was acquired by Goldman Sachs.