The smart speaker and voice assistant revolution is probably going on in your home and office right now. You can check the weather, order groceries, make appointments and get the scores from your favorite sports team.
Last week, I read a Microsoft report that predicted that 75% of households would have at least one smart speaker by the end of 2020. In 2018, about 22% of all households used a smart speaker.
In the not to distant future, you can bet that the large company 401(k) retirement plan providers like Schwab and Fidelity are going to offer you the ability to manage your 401(k) using smart speakers and voice assistants.
If the company 401(k) providers don’t offer this service, the large mutual fund companies like BlackRock, State Street, T. Rowe Price, etc., will figure it out as well. It’s anyone’s guess who will win this race.
How far off is the ability to ask your smart speaker or cell phone voice assistant which mutual fund to buy in your company 401(k) retirement plan account?
Voice search makes total sense. Especially when you consider the fact that just about every individual investor in the world can’t successfully navigate their company 401(k) retirement plan provider web site.
And those individuals are the ones who can remember their log-in and password.
Traditional online search is going away quickly. All keyboard search will soon be replaced by voice. But is that evolution a potentially good thing?
It’s great to be able to ask a voice question like, “What is the stock market doing today?” It is a completely different task to try to rank the list of your company 401(k) retirement plan mutual funds options by annual fees and investment performance.
What is going to stop a company 401(k) retirement plan provider or a mutual fund company from recommending their own product or service? The investment advisory industry term is “nothing.”
In depth analysis of “what to buy” on your company 401(k) retirement plan menu is still going to require a computer. I still use a paper document to advise my individual company 401(k) investment advice clients.
The main thing that scares me about a potential voice-activated company 401(k) retirement plan account is the privacy of data. The world has plenty of those issues already. We don’t need to add your 401(k) savings to the list of concerns.
Ric Lager
Lager & Company, Inc.
