Westpac’s robo advice product Go-invest to go
Investors will be moved into an alternative product or cashed out within two weeks.
After only launching in April 2015, Westpac’s first robo advice product BT Go-invest will be completely phased out within two weeks.
The bank has not confirmed the number of funds managed by Go-invest, but an internal review one year after launch determined the product as unviable.
Investors have until 15 March to either have the securities held in Go-invest transferred, sell their investment and receive the cash proceeds or switch to an alternative product, BT Invest.
Go-invest offered four investment portfolio models including local growth, diversified conservative, diversified moderate and diversified growth, all of which charged between 0.50% and 0.70% p.a and enforced a minimum investment of $10,000.
The new product Westpac is promoting as an alternative, BT Invest, offers five investment portfolio models all charging 0.70% p.a of the portfolio balance, and only has a minimum investment requirement of $1,000.
The big banks aren’t the only ones dabbling in the robo advice sector - there are a number of local players including Stockspot , investSMART, Acorns Australia and Quiet Growth.
Chris Brycki, founder and CEO of StockSpot told the Australian Financial Review he wasn’t surprised to hear that Go-invest was closing up, saying “I suspect it was very hard to get buy-in and get the distribution when you’ve got all the heads of these divisions who want to defend their turf.”
Interested in robo advice? Take a look at some key players in the sector.
