| Managed Assets | Annual Fee |
| $100,000 to $1 million | 0.89% |
| First $3 million | 0.79% |
| Next $2 million | 0.69% |
| Next $5 million | 0.59% |
| Over $10 million | 0.49% |
Empower’s cost is higher than most competitors with financial advisors, such as Betterment, Schwab Intelligent Portfolios Premium, and Vanguard Personal Advisors.
Empower considers itself more of a replacement for a traditional financial advisor and less of a typical robo-advisor.
Can Empower Save Me Money on Taxes?
If you open a taxable account with Empower, you’ll get tax-efficient investing as well as tax-loss harvesting guidance.
The service prioritizes debt investments that are tax-advantaged, like municipal bonds.
For tax-loss harvesting, the service looks for portions of the portfolio where an investment with a loss can be swapped out to realize the loss without changing the overall portfolio. These losses are realized to offset gains in other parts of the portfolio while also respecting wash sale rules.
Is Empower Legit?
Empower is a legitimate financial advisory firm. The fee-free cash account and financial analysis tools are also the real deal. Anyone who wants to analyze their spending habits, track their net worth, and do some retirement planning might check out Empower.
Does Empower Have High Fees?
When compared with the average fee of 1% of investable assets charged by traditional financial advisors, the fees are reasonable. If you’re comparing the Empower 0.89% AUM fee to robo-advisors with human financial advisors like Betterment, SigFig, or Schwab, the fees are high.
The Bottom Line
Empower offers high-level investment analysis software for the low cost of a phone call with a company representative.
For those with $100,000 or more in investable assets, the opportunity for an investment review and conversation with a licensed financial advisor can be quite valuable. This opportunity makes checking out Empower a viable strategy.
The high-yield, fee-free cash account is also a worthwhile place for short-term cash needs.
The paid wealth management services are best compared with those of a traditional financial advisory service. The 0.89% investment management fee is lower than some traditional financial advisory firms and in line with others.
The smart-weighting diversification model, unlimited access to financial advisors, tax-minimization strategies, portfolio customization, and goal-focused strategies are worth investigating.
Empower makes it easy to decide whether to invest with the company with accessible access to financial advisors and responsive customer service.
Everything You Need to Know About Robo-Advisors
How We Review Robo-Advisors
Providing readers with unbiased, comprehensive reviews of digital wealth management companies, more commonly known as robo-advisors, is a top priority of Investopedia. We used our 2023 consumer survey to guide the research and weightings for our 2024 robo-advisor awards. To collect the data, we sent a digital survey with 64 questions to each of the 21 companies we included in our rubric. Additionally, our team of researchers verified the survey responses and collected any missing data points through online research and conversations with each company directly. The data collection process spanned from Jan. 8, to Feb. 9, 2024.
We then developed a quantitative model that scored each company to rate its performance across nine major categories and 59 criteria to find the best robo-advisors. The score for each company’s overall star rating is a weighted average of the criteria:
- Account Services: 10.00%
- Account Setup: 5.00%
- Customer Service: 5.00%
- Fees: 15.00%
- Goal Planning: 21.00%
- Portfolio Contents: 17.00%
- Portfolio Management: 17.00%
- Security & Education: 5.00%
- User Experience: 5.00%
Additionally, during our 2023 research, many of the companies we reviewed granted our team of expert writers and editors access to live accounts so they could perform hands-on testing.
Through this all-encompassing data collection and review process, Investopedia has provided you with an unbiased and thorough review of the top robo-advisors.
Read more about how we research and review robo-advisors.
Separately, our research team conducted a survey of 205 U.S. adults aged 18 to 72 who are current clients of one of 18 robo-advisors. While the information collected did not influence the development of our ratings model, it was instrumental in gathering the valuable insights published in Investopedia’s 2023 Robo-Advisor Consumer Survey.
Participants in our 2023 Robo-Advisor Survey opted in to an online, self-administered questionnaire from a market research vendor. Data collection took place between Aug. 30 and Sept. 15, 2023, with 11 video interviews conducted with volunteer respondents from Sept. 7 to Sept. 17, 2023. Multiple quality checks, including screeners, attention gauges, comprehension evaluations, and logic metrics, among others, were used to ensure only the highest quality responses were included.
