How Wealthfront became the Fastest-Growing $1 Billion Investment Service

Wealthfront is an automated investment company founded by Andy Rachleff and Dan Caroll in 2011. And in two and a half years, the firm has managed to accumulate over $1 billion in assets under their direct supervision. Wealthfront is working with some big players in the industry, like Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures, Index Ventures and The Social + Capital Partnership.

The Millennial Investor

The company capitalizes on a new generation of traders and investors. In the US, there are over 90 million millennial investors, which if you combine, have a net worth of over $2 trillion. This number is estimated to grow by $7 billion after four years. This new generation of traders has a new outlook on trading with a completely different style, attitude and method of trading.

Continuous Innovation

Wealthfront achieved their success solely due to investing in research and technology and that is why the company went on to become the fastest growing. With incredible features like Daily Tax Loss Harvesting which was introduced in 2012, Wealthfront.ort in September 2013, the Wealthfront 500 in December 2013 and their Single Stock Diversification Service which they launched in April this year. The fact of the matter is using powerful software for managing investments and trading can give you one critical advantage, and that’s the benefit of evolving into something bigger and better.

Wealthfront has managed to achieve their success by catering to a niche market which comprises of wealthy traders and investors. They cater their high value online trading services to improve their trading and to pretty much automate everything. Here are some of interesting benefits Wealthfront offers its clients:

Benefits

Great Index Funds

Wealthfront’s service depends on consistent and accurate research which in turn helps index funds to considerably optimize their performance. Wealthfront uses ETFs to monitor 11 biggest asset classes which make up their portfolio. Every ETF is picked and selected by their team of expert financial analysts on the basis of cost, performance, tracking difficulties, market liquidity, lending policies, etc.

Tax Efficiency

Wealthfront is perhaps the only investment service which provides its customers all five tax reducing opportunities in the industry, which include:

1. Index Funds

Different from actively supervised mutual funds, index funds, on the other hand, have a lower annual turnover, which also means you get to pay less in capital gains taxes.

2. Smart Dividend Investing

Using dividends through your investment portfolio adds a bit of balance which also leads to reduced sales in a given year. This means you have to pay less in realized capital gains taxes.

3. Tax Location

All customers get to choose different asset classes and provisions for both retirement and taxable accounts which enhances their performance after taxation.

4. Daily Tax Harvesting

You can choose to get more benefits by subscribing to Wealthfront’s Daily Tax Harvesting if you have $100,000 or more invested in the market.

Tax Optimized US Index Portfolio

Client who have $500,000 invested in a taxable account, or if they have more than this amount invested can seek the advantages of the Tax Optimized US Index by identifying losses and gaining from them in the S&P 500.

Both the abovementioned products can increase your investment portfolio’s after tax return significantly, which can be up to 1.6%.

Expert Software Engineers

Another thing which might interest you is the fact that Wealthfront’s software team comprises some gifted individuals recruited from a range of top companies like LinkedIn, Facebook, Google, Apple and Twitter.

All in all, Wealthfront has made it big as an automated investment service and employs the use of cutting edge technology to serve the needs of its clients.