Robinhood Offers Retail Investors Wealth Management Services

Robinhood has launched a wealth management service targeting its less-wealthy clients.

The financial services company on Thursday (March 27) unveiled “Robinhood Strategies,” a wealth management service for its premium “Gold” customers. The service comes with a 0.25% annual fee, capped at $250.

The company is also rolling out “Robinhood Banking,” a private banking service for Gold members launching later this year. Also on tap for 2025 is “Robinhood Cortex,” an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered investment tool.

“Our goal is for Robinhood to give you a world-class financial team in your pocket, with cutting-edge tools you can’t find elsewhere,” Vlad Tenev, Robinhood’s chairman and CEO, said in the announcement.

As Reuters noted in a report on the launch, the company’s move underlines an increasing demand by retail traders for professional advice, as they’ve come to view investing as not just a hobby but a way to build wealth and financial independence.

The report also cites a 2024 survey of retail investors by Betterment that found that those who had financial advisers felt more confidence about their finances.

Robinhood Asset Management President Steph Guild told Reuters the new product could help level the playing field as personalized wealth management has long been enjoyed primarily by the ultra wealthy.

“When we looked across the landscape today, we felt there was a gap and an opportunity,” she said.

“We’re not going after someone who has $10 million. We’re going after everybody else,” added Deepak Rao, general manager and vice president of Robinhood Money.

The launch comes 10 days after Robinhood announced it had added a prediction markets hub to its app, letting users trade on the outcomes of events like the Federal Reserve’s target rates or the winners of the NCAA college basketball tournaments.

“We believe in the power of prediction markets and think they play an important role at the intersection of news, economics, politics, sports and culture,” JB Mackenzie, vice president and general manager of futures and international at Robinhood, said in a news release.

While Robinhood said it was working with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on projects related to the futures, derivatives and crypto markets, the prediction markets hub has caught the eye of another regulator.

Massachusetts’ securities regulator has subpoenaed the company’s marketing materials and information about how many of the company’s brokerage account users in the state have asked to trade college sports events contracts.

“This is just another gimmick from a company that’s very good at gimmicks to lure investors away from sound investing,” Bill Galvin, the Massachusetts secretary of state, told Reuters last week in reference to the prediction-markets hub.