UBS-Wealthfront Deal, and Its Price Tag, Surprise Advisor Techies

What You Need to Know

At least a couple of fintech experts were surprised by UBS’s plan to buy Wealthfront for $1.4 billion.
It’s ironic that Wealthfront, which once set out to disrupt traditional wealth management, has been bought by a 160-year-old bank, Tim Welsh says.
The experts are split on which is more valuable: Wealthfront’s clients or its tech.

Fintech experts interviewed by ThinkAdvisor on Thursday indicated they were surprised by UBS’s announcement that it plans to acquire Wealthfront, especially the $1.4 billion price tag.

Saying he was “very surprised,” Tim Welsh, president of Nexus Strategy, told ThinkAdvisor by email: “UBS has the wherewithal and resources to go down the Merrill Edge path and build it themselves, just like Schwab, Vanguard, Fidelity and everyone else did.”

Also significant is that “Wealthfront is so anti-establishment that there will be client defection for those who wanted an independent solution and not get swept up into a 160-year-old institution,” he predicted.

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Isn’t It Ironic?

Welsh saw it as ironic that Wealthfront had set out to “disrupt advisors and traditional wealth management via technology” but has now “sold the business to a 160-year-old bank and wirehouse — just the people they claimed were evil and had targeted to disrupt.”

He continued: “Seems like UBS is chasing Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch based on their success with digital plays via E-Trade and Merrill Edge to vastly overpay so much for Wealthfront.”

After all, he said: “There really isn’t much value in the client base with an average account size of ~$57k, meaning about $140 per year in revenues (25 bps) — nobody wants that. So the deal has to be all about the technology, which we have seen is easily replicable as Schwab, Fidelity and Vanguard have dominated the robo space soon after Wealthfront entered.”

Therefore, he added: “The deal at that valuation really defies reality. However, there must be synergies that UBS sees and the ability to get them to market immediately in order to validate the premium they are paying.”

Buying the Clients, Not the Tech?

Calling it an “interesting” deal, Joel Bruckenstein, Technology Tools for Today (T3) head, told ThinkAdvisor in a phone interview: “A lot of folks in Silicon Valley who are kind of younger did really embrace Wealthfront” based on what he had heard.

But, offering a much different take on the transaction than Welsh, Bruckenstein said Wealthfront does “have some people on their platform that have quite a bit of money…. If I’m UBS, I guess the way I would look at it is, I’m buying the relationship first and the technology second.” But if UBS “bought it just for the technology, they probably overpaid,” according to Bruckenstein.