Personal Capital Review explained by professional Forex trading experts the “ForexSQ” FX trading team, Everything you need to about PersonalCapital.com broker is in this Personal Capital Review.
What Is Personal Capital Broker?
Personal Capital targets high-balance clients by offering a service that combines robo-advisor algorithms with human advisors: Account balances of $200,000 or more get assigned two dedicated financial advisors; those below that have access to a team of advisors.
That high-touch approach comes with high account management fees: Personal Capital charges 0.89% per year, though large account balances — $1 million or more — earn discounted rates.
Separate from its managed accounts service, Personal Capital also offers a slew of financial and investment planning tools that are completely free. Users can link their existing accounts and track spending, net worth, portfolio performance, retirement progress and fees.
Where Personal Capital shines
Investments: Personal Capital’s paid services fall into two tiers: Clients with $100,000 to $200,000 in assets are invested in a portfolio of exchange-traded funds that carry a weighted average expense ratio of 0.09%.
The company’s advisory service invests clients with balances of $200,000 or more in a customized portfolio that includes individual securities through a process it calls Smart Indexing. This process invests equally in all sectors, rather than mimicking an index like the S&P 500, and it’s not unique to Personal Capital; other sources refer to it as smart beta.
The company says Smart Indexing reduces risk while increasing returns, the holy grail for investors. In Personal Capital’s hypothetical backtests, the strategy outperformed the S&P 500 by over 1.5% annually, with lower volatility. It also allows the company to find individual tax-loss harvesting opportunities. Because Personal Capital uses individual securities, it can easily target these and sell them as needed, as Wealthfront does in its direct indexing service.
Tools: These are free and comprehensive, including an investment checkup, 401(k) fee analyzer and a spending tracker. Though you must create Personal Capital login credentials to use them, you don’t need to be enrolled in the company’s advisory service. Once you sign up, you can quickly link your bank, brokerage and credit card accounts. Personal Capital analyzes the asset allocation in your investment accounts based on the information it finds, telling you exactly how much you need to decrease or increase your holdings of certain asset classes to line up with its recommended target. DIY investors can use this advice to make adjustments on their own.
Personal Capital also offers spending analysis, a Mint-like look at your cash flow that divides expenses into categories such as groceries, health care, clothing and restaurants. The tool tracks income sources and bills due for linked accounts as well.
And the retirement planner analyzes your investment accounts to forecast whether you’ll meet your self-determined income needs in retirement. You can adjust those needs, as well as your expected Social Security income and the tax, life expectancy and investment return assumptions made by the calculator. The tool pulls real-time data from your Personal Capital account and incorporates day-to-day financial activity, updating estimates of retirement spending based on current spending figures.
The Personal Capital dashboard — part of the free offering — lets you view your entire financial picture in one place. You can easily view aspects such as net worth, cash flow, portfolio balances and portfolio allocation. A holdings module shows you how all of your investments are performing, letting you view them by percentage of your portfolio, dollar amount, and whether they’re “gainers” or “losers.”
Dedicated financial advisors: This is clearly the piece of the puzzle that attracts high-net-worth clients: Those with balances of $200,000 or more get access to two dedicated financial advisors who can answer questions about everything, including retirement planning, refinancing and obtaining a mortgage. Clients with $100,000 to $200,000 invested have access to a team of advisors. These advisors are available via phone, email or video chat.
Where Personal Capital falls short
Management fee: Managing your investments with a financial advisor would cost significantly more than working with Personal Capital; the average advisor charges over 1% of assets managed. If you’re in the balance tier that gets you access to dedicated advisors and customized portfolios — $200,000 or more — Personal Capital will save you money over working with an independent advisor elsewhere.
But at other account balances, and stacked up against robo-advisors, Personal Capital is clearly on the high end when it comes to fees: Investors with under $1 million will pay 0.89% of assets managed; many robo-advisors charge closer to 0.25%. Even compared with similar hybrid service Vanguard Personal Advisor Services, Personal Capital is more expensive: Vanguard charges 0.30% for that offering, though clients get a dedicated advisor only if they invest $500,000 or more in assets.
Account minimum: In 2015, Personal Capital lowered its account minimum from $100,000 to $25,000, a bar that is fairly reasonable for a hybrid service that includes access to financial advisors. However, it recently brought that minimum back to $100,000, once again putting the wealth management service out of reach for many customers.
Is Personal Capital right for you?
Personal Capital should appeal to two main kinds of investors who fall on opposite ends of the spectrum: DIY investors who can use the company’s free and comprehensive tools to gain valuable insight into their portfolios, and high-net-worth investors who can deposit enough with the service to gain access to dedicated financial advisors.
Investors who fall in that $100,000 to $200,000 range, which only offers access to a team of financial advisors, can find a similar level of service for less at competitors like Betterment and Vanguard Personal Advisor Services.
Personal Capital Review Conclusion
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