Quora Answer: Should I Use a Robo-Advisor for My Personal Savings?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Should I use a robo-advisor for my personal savings?”

Definitely not.  A robo-advisor cannot replace an experienced financial services consultant.  There is much more to financial advisory than simply asking questions in a checklist and acting accordingly.

Part of financial advisory is understanding the client’s needs better than the client, and advising accordingly.  It involves human interaction, and addressing issues before they arise.  A large part of a financial advisor’s job is communicating with the client when the portfolio is not performing well, and to manage expectations.  Robo-advisors cannot do that.

Robo-advisers, whilst sophisticated, can only act within certain parameters.  That means a robo-adviser cannot inform clients of options, and courses of action, that are not in the programming.  They cannot think, since that involves sentience, and we have no achieved true artificial intelligence.