Betterment is built to lower fees and seek higher returns.

¹ In order to generate revenue on their "free" service, Schwab allocates up to 30% of a portfolio to cash. In certain circumstances, keeping uninvested cash can result in a drag on annual returns, known as cash drag. This illustration compares what could happen if an investor fully invested all assets in an investment portfolio in securities as opposed to leaving a portion of those investable assets in cash. A Schwab moderate model portfolio, as provided on the Schwab Intelligent Portfolio FAQ page, holds 61% stock, 5% gold and other precious metals, 23.5% bonds, and 10.5% in cash. To calculate the potential cash drag in a Schwab portfolio, we studied expected returns for a Betterment portfolio of 72% stocks, 28% bonds. We selected that Betterment portfolio because it maintains that same proportion of stocks to bonds as in the moderate Schwab portfolio described above. To study the effect of cash drag, we looked at the performance of a hypothetical investor who invested 89.5% of their assets in the Betterment 72% stock portfolio and held 10.5% in cash compared to the performance of an investor who invested 100% of their assets in the Betterment 72% stock portfolio and held 0% in cash. For our analysis, we assume that this 72% stock Betterment portfolio will have an annual return of 4.8% in excess of the risk-free rate (the risk-free rate is typically very close to the interest rate paid on cash in a savings account) and a portfolio volatility of 13.1%. We calculated the estimated expected return over one year that could be earned in the 72% stock Betterment portfolio that was instead lost to the drag of holding 10.5% of assets in cash to be 0.41%. For purposes of this illustrative comparison, fees were not included in this calculation.

² Fees for the underlying investments in a Betterment portfolio total between 0.07% and 0.15%.

Information as of 1/18/2018