Nvestly: Social Investment Site for Millennials

Nvestly Launches Social Investment Platform for the Average Person

by Ivy Schmerken

                Nvestly is a social investment site aimed towards millennials that opened to the public earlier this week.  This site functions similar to the Mint app but instead of being for personal budgets, Nvestly allows users to import their portfolio from major brokers.  Like Mint, Nvestly uses Intuit technology to pull this information from five major brokers securely.  Nvestly users can then share their percentage returns to the public or to followers that they select individually depending on if they choose to have their profile as private or public.  The biggest benefit of using Nvestly compared to other social media sites is that the trades are verified. Other features include normalized cash flows, benchmarks, and analytics.

                I think it is great that the site is looking at adding education. Nvestly is aware that their target market for this site, the millennials, have been shaken by the financial crisis and may not be as willing to invest. I think a virtual portfolio will allow new investors to get comfortable investing before they are willing to invest their own money. Then after they start investing they would be able to reach out to experienced investors for guidance. This sounds like it will be a great way to use the social media aspect of its site in order to attract new users and new investors.

                Another way Nvestly uses social media is to add competition between users. While Nvestly only shows return percentages and not the amount invested, users can still compete with one another to try and get the highest return on investments.  These competitions can be between friends or other Nvestly users. I think this a good way to keep users engaged and hopefully make them pay more attention to their investments.  Another feature on this site that I like is the ability to see what top performers are holding in their portfolio. I think this is a very useful tool especially for the average investor that may not have as much time to do research on what stocks to buy.

                After taking a look at Nvestly.com, it looks very similar to Mint. It appears to have a very user friendly interface and the analytic information appears to be easy to use.  I think this approachable platform will make it an attractive option for the average investor. Though this site has a great user interface and features, I think the most important feature any site like this needs in order to be successful is security.  Nvestly uses Intuit which has security levels similar to what banks use in order to connect to the five major brokerage firms.  I think the combination of all these features and security will attract millennials and will allow users to leverage a large amount of information in order to better manage their portfolio.

http://www.wallstreetandtech.com/asset-management/nvestly-launches-social-investment-platform-for-the-average-person/d/d-id/1316434