Nest Egg Review: Investment Planning For Local Bank Customers

Does investing in the stock market seem like a black box to you? Sure, you can hire an investment advisor for guidance, but that can get expensive. You can also go the robo-advisor route if you're comfortable with fully-automated advice. Another alternative is Nest Egg. 

Nest Egg is a robo-advisor that also offers the option to speak with a live person when needed. To use its platform, you’ll need to connect with one of its partner banks or credit unions.

Investments and personal assistance are provided through the partner bank while the investment robo-advisor service is provided through Nest Egg. Let’s take a closer look at what it's all about.

Nest Egg (Nest Investments LLC) is a fintech that allows people to determine their risk level and invest based on a risk score. Its CEO and founder is Michael Church. Nest Egg is a Registered Investment Adviser and is based in Philadelphia, PA. 

Nest Egg partners with banks to offer digital investment advice to their customers. Basically, it's a robo-advisor that guides people through building an investment portfolio that is aligned with their financial goals and risk tolerance. In addition to automated portfolio analysis and financial advice, customers connected through a bank can choose to speak with their bank’s advisor.

After answering a few investment-related questions, its software determines your level of risk. The result is a risk score that that it calls your "Nest Egg Number." From that risk score, you'll be provided suggestions for a portfolio.

The portfolio that it recommends will be a configuration of equities, fixed income, alternatives, and cash, all based on your risk score and investment objectives. From there, the software will rebalance your portfolio each quarter. If some goals are coming up short, it will recommend additional contributions to the portfolio. 

• Bank of America
• Capital One
• Chase
• Citi
• Etrade
• PenFed
• Schwab
• TD Ameritrade
• Wells Fargo

While Nest Egg is free to use, there will be commissions on investments charged by the partner bank.  Banks benefit by signing on as partners since it increases their customer base and fees.

In fact, a Nest Egg press release says, “The platform enables banks to increase fee income and wallet share.” Buy and sell investments for free with these brokers.

Nest Egg is an investment company and does not offer deposit accounts. This means it is not FDIC-insured. It does use TD Ameritrade as its partner custodian, however, which means Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) protection is available.

If you’ve tried other robo advisor investment services and weren’t impressed or found they didn’t meet your needs, Nest Egg may be worth a try. With its mix of purely automated robo-advising and the ability to speak with a live person, it could be a good match for those who want a little more human involvement.

Unfortunately, it appears that it has a very small number of partner banks, which might be a deciding factor when choosing the service. Also, it should be understood that while Nest Egg's platform is free, its partner banks are still free to charge their own investment commissions and/or fees. 

If you're looking for a cheap investment platform or robo-advisor that doesn't require you to be a customer of a particular bank or credit union, these are our top choices.