Pontera
Future Capital
Manage 401(k), 403(b), 457 Assets
Automatic Rebalancing
Unlimited Advisor Support
Flexible Fiduciary Models
Easy to Learn
SOC 2 Certification
The most direct comparison with Pontera’s tools, functionality, and value proposition is the Future Capital Wealth platform. Here's how Pontera and Future Capital Wealth compare across key operational areas.
Automatic Rebalancing
While Pontera enables automated rebalancing, advisors must still manually initiate and monitor these tasks. Automated trading and rebalancing are built into Future Capital's platform, minimizing ongoing advisor effort.
Fiduciary Flexibility
With Future Capital, advisors have the flexibility to operate as the sole fiduciary or leverage Future Capital's full fiduciary services. Pontera requires advisors to shoulder full fiduciary responsibility for held-away assets, adding compliance complexity.
Easy to Learn
Future Capital's intuitive user experience allows advisors to quickly put the platform to work. Pontera's software is known for its steep learning curve and scalability limitations that impede efficient asset management.
Unlimited Advisor Support
Pontera largely leaves advisors to go it alone, offering no credentialed assistance or marketing enablement. Future Capital provides dedicated support from a team of credentialed professionals along with customized marketing resources to help advisors boost visibility of held-away management services.
While Pontera has carved out a space in the held-away 401(k) asset management market, advisors have alternative financial management platforms to evaluate from both established players and innovative newcomers.
Future Capital Wealth offers an innovative held-away asset management platform that provides a complete spectrum of management and fiduciary options to financial advisors looking to manage held-away 401(k) and other workplace retirement account assets. Their Construct solution provides an efficient, user-friendly platform to help advisors deliver highly personalized retirement strategies that align precisely with their clients’ holistic financial goals.
Betterment was founded in 2008 and launched its robo-advisor product at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2010. They currently operate as a registered investment advisor and broker-dealer that offers retail investment software, an advisor platform, and a 401(k) product for businesses. Betterment for Advisors proposes to be advisors’ “end-to-end custodian” with advanced technology to help advisors scale and deliver a personalized client experience.
Absolute Capital began in 2002 to “navigate the dynamic and demanding investment landscape with strategies to help investors reach their unique goals.” The centerpiece of their offering is their Navigator Platform that proposes to connect financial advisors to over 1000 different model manager strategies that enable management of 401(k), 403(b), and 457 and other held-away retirement accounts.
Income Lab is a provider of retirement planning and retirement income management software for financial advisors. The company was founded in 2018. In January 2024, Income Lab launched Life Hub, a standalone product to help make retirement planning more accessible for advisors and clients.
Pontera offers capabilities that aim to help advisors more effectively manage and maintain compliance for their clients' held-away retirement accounts like 401(k)s and 403(b)s.
Pontera enables advisors to rebalance held-away retirement accounts like 401(k)s and 403(b)s alongside traditional custodied investment accounts through a unified interface.
Pontera integrates with many existing portfolio management systems, allowing held-away asset data to be incorporated into reporting, performance tracking, and billing workflows.
Pontera provides audit trails, supervision tools, and processes to help advisors maintain compliance when managing held-away assets, addressing custody concerns and facilitating rollovers.
Pontera does not have significant numbers of reviews on star-rating services like TrustPilot, G2, or Gartner Peer Insights. However, certain social forums frequented by financial professionals, like the r/CFP subreddit, provide insights into how financial planners and advisors feel about Pontera’s service.
While skeptical of broad 401(k) AUM billing, some advisors see value in using Pontera for higher net worth clients with significant 401(k) balances where active management could be beneficial.
Advisors find Pontera's cost excessive, with the 30 basis point fee seen as quite high for what is essentially a technology platform providing access to client 401(k) accounts.
Some express skepticism about the real value Pontera provides beyond basic rebalancing and allocation changes that advisors could potentially do without the platform. Some view charging an AUM fee on "set it and forget" 401(k) accounts as unjustified.
Concerns are raised about the compliance implications of charging an advisor fee on top of the 401(k) expenses, as well as advisors taking on full fiduciary responsibility when using Pontera.
Some believe Pontera's model creates conflicts, incentivizing advisors to charge higher fees on 401(k)s to make future IRA rollovers seem more palatable from a cost perspective.
Advisors discuss potential Pontera alternatives like Absolute Capital, But many note a lack of compelling competitors in this space currently.
Integrating Pontera with performance reporting, billing systems, and portfolio management platforms is cited as an operational hurdle by some advisors.
In summary, the discussion reveals mixed views on Pontera's value proposition, with cost, compliance, and ethical concerns raised by users in the r/CFP subreddit, despite the recognized need for solutions to manage client 401(k) assets more holistically.
Pontera does not disclose pricing on its website, and there is no official disclosure of Pontera pricing elsewhere on the internet. According to users on the r/CFP subreddit, Pontera charges around 30 bps to advisors to link and manage client 401(k) accounts through their platform.
Some advisors find this 30 bps cost expensive, especially for clients without large enough taxable accounts to bill the Pontera fee against. Some advisors report having to “eat the fee” or offer a discounted rate compared to their traditional AUM fee. Others only use Pontera for clients with large existing taxable AUM to absorb the additional fee without straining liquidity. At least one advisor was seeking insights on using Pontera versus traditional TAMP solutions like AssetMark or TPFG for 401(k) management.
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