Full service brokerage Capital One Investing has announced a “fund evaluator tool” to the bells and whistles of their investor services. Capital One joins the growing legions of both Fintech startups and traditional financial firms that see the value in providing automated services as a feature for consumers. Robo Advisors really make sense as they may impartially drive decisions based on the specific criteria of the individual. And anything that stops the broker from phoning you every few weeks with the next great investment idea is a good thing. Of course automated investment platforms are only as good as the code that powers the decision. Capital One will probably continue moving in the Robo Advisor direction having hired a new VP of Product Development, Sunjay Pandey, who came from Amazon – and not a bank.
Pandey, who maintains a mission of accelerating innovation at Capital One, states;
“Financial technology is revolutionizing the retail investing experience, and we’re taking a holistic, customer-centric approach to building tools and experiences that make investing a more seamless, intuitive part of daily life. We worked hard to incorporate investor input, experiences and feedback throughout the design and development of the tool to maximize the value and use of Fund Evaluator for every day investors.”
The Fund Evaluator tool, as described, is pretty basic. It is designed to evaluate mutual funds and ETFs – a service already provided by many others. Let’s see what Capital One delivers next and the type of value given to smaller investors.