Wealthfront introduces Autopilot, a Self-Driving Money service

By Pavithra R

Wealthfront, a nextgen banking service provider, has announced the launch of a new service called Autopilot that automates a client’s savings plan so as to eliminate manual account monitoring and move money around.

The launch marks a huge milestone in Wealthfront roadmap towards its ultimate goal of delivering a nextgen banking service that fully automates their clients’ finances, or what they refer to as Self-Driving Money.

“Our clients are diligent savers and follow best practices to grow their savings, but they struggle to prioritize managing their finances among a long list of competing priorities. This can lead to missed days in the market or missed days of compounding interest, which has a huge negative impact on your long term net worth. Autopilot is your free financial assistant, automating your financial tasks to ensure your savings are put to work immediately in the best account for your goals,” said Chris Hutchins, Wealthfront’s Head of Autonomous Financial Planning.

The new Autopilot can be set up in a few minutes and can monitor accounts daily to ensure that users keep only the necessary amount of cash on hand. When the balance exceeds the user’s prescribed amount, Autopilot automatically deposits the money into their account of choice. Customers can choose which account to monitor and save in and have full control over the routing if they need to cancel or change it for any reason.

“We’ve set out to build a new system that makes money with our clients, not off of them as traditional banks do,” he says. “The system we’re building has the potential to be one of the biggest wealth creation engines of our generation, automatically optimizing your money in the background while saving you time and stress,” said Wealthfront co-founder, Dan Carroll.

The company in future is planning to focus on improving the speed of money movement within the Wealthfront ecosystem. Wealthfront clients already enjoy receiving their paychecks up to two days early when they set up direct deposit with their Wealthfront Cash Account, and the company plans to continue to improve upon transfers to deliver services like same-day investing.

Recently, Wealthfront announced the addition of new checking features to its Cash Account.

Established since 2011, Wealthfront provides an automated investment management platform that allows investors to create and manages personalized, globally diversified investment portfolios at a lower cost. The firm helps users manage their money for both short-term and long-term goals by providing a Cash Account with checking features and high interest, automated investment management, and free financial advice. The FinTech provides no-fee banking and low-cost investment management through its mobile app.