The Future of Financial Advice

Here at Albert, we’re building the future of financial advice. Our mission is to guide hard working, ordinary people to the right financial decisions. Millions of people are priced out of financial advice that they want and need; Albert fills this gap.

To further our mission, we’re excited to announce that we’ve raised $15mm in venture funding led by Portag3 Ventures, with participation from existing investors including QED and American Express Ventures, all of whom have deep experience with financial consumer products.

Human advice

The introduction of chatbots, starting in the last five years, heralded a new way for companies to interact with and service their customers. In certain industries, like air travel, chatbots worked well from the start. In financial services, they’ve come up short. Ask a bank bot how much you can afford for your upcoming vacation, and you’ll probably hear something like, “Sorry. I don’t understand that command.”

When it comes to financial advice, each person’s situation is unique, requiring understanding and empathy that algorithms are (as yet) unable to provide. One of our early beliefs is that the best advice experiences are human. We launched Albert Genius to deliver this human experience to a broad consumer audience. You can ask our geniuses any financial question, and they’ll get back to you quickly, instantly building a relationship.

For a sense of how Genius works, here are real examples of things people often ask Genius:

• Hi there, I’m really interested in reducing my monthly payments for my credit cards, and a personal loan seems like a good solution. Should I borrow exactly enough to pay off my debt? (See the example: conversation about debt).
• Can I afford to go out tonight?
• I’m considering getting a dog; what financial commitments should I think about?
• What type of life insurance should I get, and what’s the difference between term and whole life?

Empowering our geniuses

Instead of replacing humans, we’re building powerful technology (AI/ML/NLP) to make human experts — our geniuses — 100 times more efficient, building a long-term scalable model. Our goal is to deliver low cost advice to 100 million Americans.

Traditional financial advice has significant inefficiencies. For example, a large part of a typical session with an advisor is spent collecting information. In contrast, because customers connect their bank accounts directly to Albert and use the app multiple times a week, our geniuses have a full picture of each customer’s financial situation before the conversation begins.

Further, because advisors have relatively few clients, decisions can be driven by anecdotal experiences. Albert, learning from millions of text messages sent and received with customers, bases decisions on data.

Working for the customer

Our goal is to build beautiful, simple financial products that work on behalf of our customers and guide them along the way.

Traditional financial advisors suffer from a disconnect between advice and action. Often when customers receive advice, friction and roadblocks in the financial system render good intentions as effective as a typical New Year’s resolution. We bridge this chasm. In Albert’s app, customers can save effortlessly, have their bills lowered automatically, get insurance, and soon invest in the stock market by just clicking a button in the app.

In America alone, we estimate that over 80 million twenty to forty year olds make less than $100k a year, have minimal net worth, and carry debt. This population needs and wants access to high quality, affordable financial advice. Albert puts this customer first, helping people meet their near and long term goals and weather financial shocks.

At our core, we believe that customers want their finances handled for them automatically. Most people don’t care for tedious chores like managing a budget manually, monitoring financial accounts, searching for discounts, or finding investments.

What’s next

We envision a future in which financial tasks are handled by Albert, and a world in which no one, regardless of income or net worth, has to worry about making the wrong financial decision. We’re using the recently raised capital to significantly expand Albert’s product lineup and to grow our awesome team.

If you’re compelled by our vision, we’d love to hear from you. Check us out here: company page.