Wealthfront Launches New Financial Planning Service: Home Planning for Path

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Jan. 29, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Wealthfront launched home planning for Path, the company's latest move towards optimizing and automating all of its clients' finances. Path is Wealthfront's automated financial planning solution that provides clients interactive guidance on their planning and investing goals through a delightful mobile app experience. Wealthfront's PhDs have identified third party financial data that can be combined with information from clients' financial accounts to make it easy to learn what goals are financially possible.

"With the introduction of Path's home planning service, our clients can now easily plan for all of their major life milestones -- from saving for their children's future to one day retiring -- with just a few taps on their phone," said Andy Rachleff co-founder and CEO of Wealthfront. "We're excited to offer this recent addition and even more excited for what's to come because we've only scratched the surface of the kind of data we can apply to make planning easier."

According to surveys conducted by Harvard's Joint Center for Housing, 90% of Millennials want to own at least one home in their lifetime. Additionally, Millennials represented about 45% of all home purchase loans in the first month of 2017, up from 42% the same time in 2016. With 85% of Wealthfront's client base under 45, the company is thrilled to launch another service that provides guidance around a milestone that is top of mind.

Path's home planning service brings clients out of the window-shopping phase of home buying and into planning and saving with the help of custom advice and recommendations. Specifically, Wealthfront has improved upon existing solutions in four ways;

• Total Home Affordability Estimate: Wealthfront's research team uses third party data to project home prices and mortgage rates that are combined with a client's financial information to estimate what type of mortgage they can expect to qualify for, when they can expect to afford their dream home and what they need to do get there. Path's home affordability estimate takes into account a client's entire balance sheet and even accounts for expenses beyond a mortgage, such as closing costs, property taxes, maintenance, and insurance.  
• Virtual House Hunting: Path links to Redfin to allow clients to explore what type of home they can afford to buy in a particular neighborhood and tracks prices in that neighborhood to update their affordability estimate over time. 
• Saving and Goal Tradeoffs: Path takes into account a client's financial picture and shows clients how saving for their future home purchase will affect their other financial goals. Clients can even explore the impact of waiting to purchase their home so they can save more money.
• Home Planning in Retirement: Path projects the value of purchased homes in the future to enable clients to see how they can use their home equity to better afford the life they want to live.

"A home purchase typically represents the single largest asset purchase in one's lifetime," said Dr. Jakub Jurek, Vice President of Research at Wealthfront. "By combining third party mortgage and real estate data with balance sheet information specific to each client, Path empowers clients to explore what is affordable now or in the future, and how a purchase decision will impact their other goals. We're thrilled to use data to deliver unique planning capabilities."

Wealthfront is proud to be the only automated advisor to offer comprehensive financial planning, its unique suite of PassivePlus® investment features and banking-related services all through the convenience of a mobile app. The company offers each service for a small fraction of what the traditional industry charges and intends to expand on these areas to deliver even more value to their clients over time. This announcement comes on the heels of Wealthfront's recent $75 million capital raise, bringing in Tiger Global Management as a new lead investor. Wealthfront doubled its assets under management in 2017 and currently manages about $10.5 billion.

About Wealthfront
Wealthfront is the only robo-advisor to offer the combination of financial planning, investment management and banking-related services exclusively through software. Because of this pure software model, the company has quickly become the automated advisor of choice among people in their 30s and 40s. Anyone with $500 can open a Wealthfront investment account which offers access to the company's unique PassivePlus® investment strategy and comprehensive automated financial planning service. Wealthfront was launched by Andy Rachleff and Dan Carroll in December 2011 and currently manages about $10.5 billion. For more information please visit www.wealthfront.com.

Disclosures

PassivePlus® is a registered trademark and property of CSSC Investment Advisory Services, Inc. ("CSSC") and is used under license. CSSC and Wealthfront are not affiliated companies. 

Financial advisory services are offered by Wealthfront, Inc., an SEC-registered investment advisor. Brokerage products and services are offered by Wealthfront Brokerage Corporation, member FINRA / SIPC, and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wealthfront, Inc. Please see our Full Disclosure for important details. 

Resources

http://www.npr.org/2016/07/26/487470787/fewer-young-people-buying-houses-but-why  

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/26/most-millennials-want-to-buy-a-home-but-about-half-have-nothing-saved.html

SOURCE Wealthfront