Investment management is an increasingly important problem. With the decline of defined benefit plans and the increasingly shaky social security system, most people will have to rely primarily on their savings and retirement accounts to fund living expenses after they stop working. But investing is complicated and time consuming, and the array of options is bewildering to most people: stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, real estate partnerships, MLP’s, etc.
Today we are announcing an investment in SigFig, an investment company for the digital era. The company was originally founded as Wikinvest, which gave do-it-yourself investors a resource to help them understand stocks, mutual funds and other investment products. But the founders soon realized investors needed a more fundamental resource: a service to stay on top of their own accounts.
SigFig now syncs with 100 major brokerages and allows you to easily track your investment and retirement accounts on the web and mobile devices. SigFig’s algorithms will help you identify which of your investments are laggards or whether you are paying unnecessarily high fees–not something custodians and investment advisors like to highlight. The product will also keep you abreast of unusual price swings and provide other useful market information. It’s a free service, you should sign up for it today.
In partnership with CNN Money and USA Today, SigFig currently analyzes more than $75 Billion in assets and those numbers are growing at a healthy clip. We think SigFig is building a strong data foundation and is developing some very interesting investment products. It’s too early to say exactly what those will be, except they will be low cost, easy to understand, high quality and investor friendly. Along with our colleagues at Bain Capital Ventures, we are excited to partner with Mike and his team and we welcome them to the USV portfolio.