WealthTech in Germany

WealthTech is the software layer of wealth management: robo-advisors that build and rebalance a portfolio, digital brokerage apps, and the tools banks use behind the scenes to advise clients at scale. In Germany the field grew out of two separate starting points. Banks digitized their existing advisory business, and a wave of standalone robo-advisors launched to compete for the same investor directly through an app.

Robo advisor vergleich, the German search for a robo-advisor comparison, is one of the most searched terms in the field, and it points to a crowded market: more than a dozen providers compete on cost, portfolio construction and minimum investment size.

quirion, founded in Berlin, calls itself Germany's first robo-advisor and is a subsidiary of Quirin Privatbank, which acts as its BaFin-licensed custodian bank. According to its own reporting, quirion manages assets for close to 100,000 customers, invested through globally diversified index funds and ETFs. Scalable Capital, based in Munich, runs both a robo-advisor called Scalable Wealth and a brokerage product, and reports more than one million clients across its business in its own company factsheet.

The comparison does not stop at standalone platforms. comdirect and other branch banks sell their own robo-advisor as an add-on to an existing account, so a customer who searches for a robo-advisor comparison often ends up choosing between an independent platform and one attached to a bank they already use.

A robo-advisor is not a shortcut around German banking supervision. BaFin's own guidance on robo-advice states that offering automated portfolio management or investment advice needs authorization under section 32 of the Banking Act (KWG), exactly as it would if a human gave the same advice in a branch. That is why quirion works through a licensed bank and why Scalable Capital holds its own banking license through Scalable Capital Bank GmbH.

Under MiFID II, a robo-advisor has to assess whether an investment suits the client before it proposes one, the same suitability test a human advisor runs, only automated through a questionnaire at onboarding. BaFin supervises this from its offices in Bonn and Frankfurt am Main and can examine at any time whether a platform's algorithm actually applies the legal criteria for investment advice.

Fee pressure is constant. Scalable Capital lists more than €60 billion in client assets in its factsheet, two thirds of it in ETFs, and competing on price against that scale is the daily reality for a smaller robo-advisor. The same pressure pushes platforms to add features beyond pure portfolio management: tax-loss harvesting, sustainable portfolio options and, for some providers, crypto assets alongside ETFs.

WealthTech jobs in Germany concentrate in Berlin and Munich, home to the country's two largest robo-advisors, with Frankfurt adding roles at the traditional asset managers building their own digital tools. For family wealth above what a robo-advisor covers, the field connects to family offices in Frankfurt, which manage larger private fortunes outside a bank's standard advisory process.

Finance Loop is the meeting place for people who build and invest in WealthTech across Germany, Austria and Switzerland: product managers from robo-advisors and asset managers, bankers and the founders of new investment platforms. Its events take place in Frankfurt and also in Munich, Berlin and Hamburg.

Finance Loop is a partner of the FinTech Founder & Investor Evening, presented by Finteda, the law firm Schalast and the wealth management software company Fincite. For the bitcoin side of a portfolio, the masterclass Bitcoin for Investors covers portfolio fit, access routes and custody. Related pages: WealthTech in Frankfurt and robo-advisors in Germany.

WealthTech is software and digital services for wealth management and private investors, covering robo-advisors, digital brokerage and the portfolio tools banks use with clients. The WealthTech answer in the knowledge hub goes through the category and its licenses.

No single robo-advisor fits every investor. Compare the license and custodian bank behind the platform, the fee once any first-year discount ends, the portfolio construction (passive index funds versus a broader mix) and the minimum investment. quirion and Scalable Capital are the two names that come up most often in a robo advisor vergleich, and a bank's own robo-advisor, such as comdirect's, is the alternative for someone who wants to keep one account.

Yes. A robo-advisor needs authorization under the Banking Act just like a human advisor, and BaFin supervises it under the same suitability rules that come from MiFID II. A platform without a license, or without a licensed bank behind it, is not legally allowed to manage or advise on client portfolios in Germany.