MoneyLion breaks down traditional barriers to investing, such as investment minimums and management fees, to empower millions of Americans who may lack access to traditional investment strategies and who deserve an easier way to build financial stability.
Here we believe everyone can dream big, even if they start small. With managed investing from MoneyLion, you can finally make your money work as hard as you do. Get started at moneylion.com or by downloading the MoneyLion app.
Leveraging 40+ years of experience
To bring you premium investment advice and products, we partner with Wilshire Associates Inc. (“Wilshire”), a global investment advisory firm that specializes in customizing solutions to meet the investment needs of their clients.
For over 40 years, Wilshire has been advising some of the nation’s largest and most successful investors, and advises on more than $1 trillion in assets. We leverage their recommendations to help you invest — whether you start with $1 or $1,000.
How investing with MoneyLion works
1. We listen: Strategic asset allocation
How you allocate your investments is one of the most important financial decisions you must make, and our approach removes pressure from this intimidating hurdle by taking care of determining your asset allocation for you.
Leveraging the same insights Wilshire offers to its institutional clients, we built a series of risk-based asset allocation portfolios designed just for MoneyLion members (see the end of this article for a list and descriptions).
When you open a MoneyLion Investment Account in the MoneyLion app, we ask a few questions about your risk tolerance. Your answers help us recommend an asset allocation portfolio aligned to your personal investment preferences and risk comfort level.
2. We select: Choosing the ETF mix that fits
Next, we select the right mix of ETFs to implement your specific asset allocation. ETFs allow you to access baskets of multiple securities in a simple, convenient, low-cost way, making them ideal for many types of investors.
How do we choose? Wilshire searches and monitors the entire universe of over 2,000 ETFs, selecting only those that are well priced, highly liquid, efficiently traded, well established, and with records of closely tracking the returns of their benchmarks. See the end of this article for a list of ETFs we use in MoneyLion Investment Accounts (as of June 2020).
3. We invest: Putting your money to work
When you add money to your investment account in any amount (there are no minimums or asset-based management fees!), we will buy ETF shares (or fractions of shares — to help every dollar go further) on your behalf to put your money to work. You can view your portfolio of investments any time in the MoneyLion app. An easy way to add money to your account and take advantage of dollar cost averaging is with our Auto Investing option!
4. We manage: Rebalancing helps you stay on track
Once you’re invested, we monitor your account and strive to keep your dollars working hard and aligned to your risk tolerance over time. To do this, we regularly trade or rebalance your portfolio at no cost to make sure your weightings across your investments stay on track.
Investing on your terms
You can choose to make modifications after your allocation is implemented by using the Risk Slider in the app. The Risk Slider allows you to see how being more or less aggressive would change your portfolio allocation. You can even go super conservative with our SteadyIncome portfolio or super aggressive with an All Equity portfolio.
If you like what you see, you can implement the update, and we’ll rebalance your investments — at no cost, as always.
Strategic asset allocation portfolios
Here are our five core portfolios, each based on a preferred level of risk:
- Conservative: Seeks to protect your portfolio by weighting most heavily to fixed income (bond) ETFs, with only a smaller proportional allocation to equity (stock) ETFs, offering liquidity and targeting stability but with the trade-off of offering lower potential returns.
- Moderately conservative: Seeks to protect your portfolio by weighting heavily to fixed income ETFs while also seeking to achieve some growth by adding some weighting to equity ETFs. Increased potential returns when compared with the conservative portfolio, but with the addition of increased risk.
- Moderate: Seeks to achieve growth while still managing risk by weighting to fixed income ETFs and equity ETFs fairly evenly, but with a slight tilt toward equities. It may experience some volatility (but most likely still less than the volatility of the overall market) in pursuit of long-term growth. Increased potential returns when compared with the moderately conservative portfolio, but with the addition of further increased risk.
- Moderately aggressive: Takes on higher risk to seek higher potential long-term returns, and is typically weighted more heavily to equity ETFs, but with some weighting to fixed income ETFs as well to help cushion against volatility.
- Aggressive: Takes on substantial risk in an attempt to maximize returns and is heavily weighted to equity ETFs, with only a small (typically 20% or less) weighting to fixed income ETFs. This portfolio may endure extensive volatility in pursuit of higher long-term potential gains.
Chart: Asset classes and ETFs for MoneyLion investment accounts
| Asset Class | ETF | Ticker |
|---|---|---|
| US large-cap stocks | Vanguard S&P 500 ETF | VOO |
| International developed market stocks | Vanguard FTSE Developed Markets ETF | VEA |
| US small/mid-cap stocks | Vanguard Extended Market ETF | VXF |
| International emerging market stocks | Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets ETF | VWO |
| Short-term municipal bonds | iShares Short-Term Nat’l Muni Bond ETF | SUB |
| US municipal bonds | Vanguard Tax-Exempt Bond ETF | VTEB |
| International stocks | Vanguard Total International Stock ETF | VXUS |
| Cash | Cash | N/A |
Align your portfolio to your passions with thematic investing
In addition to our core risk-based portfolios, we also offer further customization options with thematic investing through our “portfolio themes.” If you’ve ever wanted to invest in something broad, like an emerging technology that could be the next big thing, or in a specific passion or interest such as climate change, portfolio themes can allow you to do that. They help you ensure that your portfolio reflects your personal preferences and your investment preferences.
MoneyLion currently offers three optional portfolio themes. Powered by industry leaders Global X and Wilshire, each one lets you invest in a carefully selected set of ETFs aligned to a specific topic:
- Future Innovation: ETFs focused on disruptive technologies like robotics, artificial intelligence, and autonomous cars.
- Greater Good: ETFs aligned to companies that exhibit positive environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) characteristics.
- Earn & Grow: Dividend-paying equity ETFs that offer higher yield with some growth.
You can learn more about the value of thematic investing and the variety of options and benefits here. It’s important to note that thematic investing typically focuses on a more narrow or specialized selection of investments (in our case, ETFs) to capitalize on an investment preference, goal, or future growth trend. So while thematic ETFs can be beneficial to your overall portfolio, it’s always ideal to maintain diversification.
Your time is now — make it count
MoneyLion believes everyone deserves a path to their dreams, and we’d love to help you get started today. The earlier you start, the more time your money has to grow. Please visit moneylion.com or download the MoneyLion app to learn more.
This article was originally published in March of 2019 and was updated in June 2020.
