Overview of SoFi Invest
If you thought SoFi was just for student loans, you should think again. The financial
conglomerate has built an investment platform with several valuable services. This is one
brokerage firm worth checking out.
SoFi Invest Pricing and Minimum Deposit
| Investments | Commissions |
|---|
| Stocks and ETFs | $0 |
| Options | not offered |
| Mutual funds | not offered |
Opening and Funding an Account
SoFi has a user-friendly online form where an account can be opened at lightning speed. This is because the form does not require much information to get an account open—just a name, email, and password. After clicking on the “Invest now” button on the SoFi Invest home page, you’ll get a variety of pictorial selections.
When you’re ready to fund an account, you’ll need to provide the standard list of data points, like Social Security Number and date of birth. Linking an external bank account is quick and easy. We were able to submit a trade the same day we made a deposit.
Investments and Accounts
SoFi Invest is an ultra-low-cost investment firm. As such, it doesn’t have a very large list of tradable assets for self-directed customers. Only stocks, ETFs, closed-end funds, and cryptocurrencies are available at the moment. Moreover, many stocks are not available, including penny, foreign, and over-the-counter instruments.
This small list gets even smaller in the broker’s robo service. It trades a small selection of ETFs, many of which are SoFi funds.
As for account types, there are joint, individual, and retirement accounts (joint accounts are not available in self-directed mode).
If you have no clue how to handle any of these accounts, SoFi does offer free financial advice with
Certified Financial Planners®. The service is done completely online, and it’s easy to schedule an
appointment on SoFi’s website.
Banking Tools
Through its program SoFi Money, our financial conglomerate under study offers several nice banking tools.
First is a debit card. This isn’t any ol’ plain debit card. It’s a World Mastercard that comes with a host of services from Mastercard, including travel services and vacation packages. SoFi itself offers no-fee overdraft coverage and a 0.25% APY. Currently, there is also a $100 welcome bonus.
Through a partnership with Allpoint, the debit card can be used at roughly 55,000 ATMs throughout the United States without incurring any fees.
Another great perk of the SoFi Money card is round-ups. A purchase is rounded up to the nearest dollar, and the spare change transferred to a cash account.
In line with SoFi’s no-fee policy, the company does not charge any account fees for SoFi Money, nor does it require a minimum deposit or balance.
It’s possible to divide a SoFi Money account into vaults. These are partitions (not separate accounts) that can be used for different purposes. Round-ups are transferred into a vault.
A SoFi Money account can be linked to a SoFi Invest account. This makes transferring funds between the two quite easy using the company’s software. Plus, they both can be accessed with a single login.
The one thing we don’t like about SoFi Money is that there are no checks.
But SoFi does have a credit card. This one is a World Elite Mastercard. It earns points for purchases, and these points can be redeemed for cryptocurrencies in a self-directed brokerage account.
Website
SoFi Invest is a modern brokerage firm, so it goes without saying that it has a website. Somewhat surprisingly, though, the platform is not very advanced.
At the top of the site is a row of links that help navigate through all the different account types available at the company (loans, bank accounts, investments, and so on).
The brokerage section is trimmed down so that there aren’t many trading tools. For example, security profiles have simple charts with no gadgets at all. There are no technical indicators or drawing tools, for example. A chart cannot be displayed full screen, and there is only one plot style, which is line.
There is a watchlist button that appears on asset profiles. This makes bookmarking an investment quite easy. But there are no alerts.
The broker’s order ticket is unique by offering the ability to set up recurring purchases. There are two other order types: market and limit. That’s about it for stocks and funds.
Cryptocurrencies have very similar charts, profiles, and order tickets (unfortunately).
Mobile App
Although there are no security alerts on the website, SoFi does offer account alerts through its mobile app. These include things like icon badges and sounds for activities like money transfers.
Like the website, SoFi’s app displays multiple financial themes like credit scores, loans, cards, investing, etc. During our research, it was easy to scroll through these and tap on an icon and go to where we wanted.
The downside once again is that the brokerage section simply doesn’t have much on it. Profiles have charts with up to 5 years of price data, the same situation on the web. Oddly, a chart cannot be rotated horizontally.
The website’s order ticket makes an appearance on the app with the same trade types.
Features missing on the SoFi app that we would like to see for brokerage customers include streaming video news, mobile check deposit, and some serious charting and trading tools.
Customer Support
SoFi’s emphasis on simplicity unfortunately continues into its customer service. The company has no branch locations, so in-person service is out of the question. Phone and chat services are available to brokerage customers during the week. The hours are 5 am to 5 pm, PT. On Friday, the company closes an hour early. There are no weekend hours.
Outside of these hours, SoFi Invest customers who have questions may find some answers on the company’s Help center. Located at support.sofi.com, this long list of Frequently Asked Questions is arranged by category, such as personal loans and credit cards. There’s also a brokerage section.
The SoFi site doesn’t have much of a self-help section after logging in, other than a tax center.
Sofi Invest Pricing
Given how trimmed down this brokerage firm is, it shouldn’t come as a major surprise that its pricing schedule is very low. In fact, SoFi prides itself on charging little to nothing for its services.
Self-directed brokerage accounts have no fees, minimums, or commissions (for securities). You can open an account with a zero balance if you wish. You may want to eventually fund it, though, because SoFi frequently offers cash bonuses for adding funds or performing other transactions.
For cryptocurrencies, there is a commission. It’s a markup or markdown on each transaction, with a maximum amount of 1.25%. As just mentioned, there are often crypto bonus promotions, so keep an eye out for them.
Robo accounts have no fees and no commissions. There is no annual percent-based fee. SoFi is one of the few brokers not to charge one. There is a $5 minimum to get started.
Crypto Trading
Perhaps the most enticing part of SoFi’s investment offerings is crypto trading. Currently, the
company offers trading in Algorand (ALGO), Aave (AAVE), Bancor (BNT), Basic Attention Token (BAT), Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Chainlink (LINK), Cardano (ADA), Compound (COMP), Cosmos (ATOM), Decentraland (MANA), Dogecoin (DOGE), Enjin Coin (ENJ), Ethereum (ETH), Ethereum Classic (ETC), Filecoin (FIL), Litecoin (LTC), Maker (MKR), Polkadot (DOT), Polygon (MATIC), Solana (SOL), Stellar (XLM), SushiSwap (SUSHI), Synthetix (SNX), Tezos (XTZ), The Graph (GRT), Uniswap (UNI), and Yearn.finance (YFI). This is a great list!
Other coins may be offered in the future. As of now, coins can’t be transferred into or out of a Crypto Investing account.
Trading tools are once again rather rudimentary. Charting comes with no tools, and mountain is the only graph style. The order ticket does offer trading in either shares or dollars.
SIPC does not cover crypto accounts, and SoFi has no private insurance for digital currencies.
Security Research and Financial Education
Although SoFi’s margin service doesn’t really live up to very much, the broker-dealer does have some decent educational materials. These are in the form of articles and videos. Because this company started out as a student loan firm, it does have a large emphasis on personal financial education. This of course will benefit Millennials and other young traders.
Examples of articles and videos we found include:
- How Do Student Loans Affect Your Credit Score?
- How Does a Balloon Mortgage Work?
- Do Student Loans Count as Income?
As far as learning resources on actual trading go, it pretty much goes downhill from there. There are no screeners on the SoFi Invest website for stocks or funds, and that’s a huge oversight.
SoFi does publish groups of securities on its site, and this does help for research to an extent. Examples include Trending, Recent Searches, and SoFi ETFs. Securities and digital currencies both have icons, and this makes browsing through them easy.
Once on an asset’s profile, the situation becomes even more bleak. SoFi provides limited trading details on a stock or ETF—data points like dividend yield, volume, and P/E ratio. There aren’t many of these, and company info is even worse (just a brief paragraph).
There are news articles on popular stocks. For Tesla, we found about 30 articles from the past day. Sources include The Wall Street Journal, Benzinga, and Fool.com.
Securities and cryptocurrencies can be added to a watchlist that syncs with the mobile app. All of the resources on the website are there. Plus, the mobile app has some information that the website doesn’t have.
Popular SoFi investors (with their account positions) are shown on the app. It’s possible to follow these traders and view their recent transactions.
Information on cryptocurrencies is even starker than that for securities. Few articles and almost no trading details.
Miscellaneous Services
Initial Public Offerings: Not only does SoFi Invest offer early access to upcoming IPOs, it actually promotes this service on its website with banners, an IPO section, FAQs, learning materials, and more.
DRIP Availability: Available free of charge in SoFi self-directed accounts.
Fractional Shares: Stocks and ETFs can be traded in whole dollars or whole shares at SoFi Invest. Same for cryptocurrencies.
Individual Retirement Accounts: SoFi Invest has Roth, traditional, and SEP accounts. A traditional IRA, but not a Roth, can be rolled over.
Recommendations
Retirement Savers and Long-Term Investors: The SoFi website does have some good tools
for long-term investing. These include home loans, a life insurance calculator, a mortgage
calculator, and plenty of educational materials on lots of personal financial topics.
Nevertheless, other resources are missing, like a 401(k) option, annuities, and target-date
mutual funds. TD Ameritrade has all of these and more.
Beginning Investors: SoFi Invest would be a decent choice for new traders. It has a robo
program, lots of personal financial tools, educational materials, and user-friendly self-directed
accounts, too.
Small Accounts: With few fees, no minimums, and zero commissions, SoFi Invest is a good
choice for investors starting out with literally nothing.
Mutual Funds: As already mentioned, SoFi does not offer access to America’s mutual fund
marketplace. Firstrade does, and it has thousands of funds. It would be a good choice.
ETF and Stock Trading: The lack of decent software makes SoFi Invest a poor choice for
stock and ETF trading. Webull
has excellent software plus good research tools and fractional-share trading.
Sofi Invest Review Summary
SoFi has done a good job of building a financial powerhouse with lots of services.
We particularly like its banking tools and robo advisor service. This is
a great service for beginners to start investing.
Chad Morris is a financial writer with more than 20 years experience
as both an English teacher and an avid trader. When he isn’t writing
expert content for Brokerage-Review.com, Chad can usually be found
managing his portfolio or building a new home computer.
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