Empower (Personal Capital)
Framework category: yield venue
Advisory and wealth-management platform with a brokerage arm and Personal Cash high-yield account.
Primary use
Higher-balance advisory relationships with a free aggregation dashboard, plus a cash sweep product. Often paired with another robo for the smaller bucket.
Redundancy role
Advisory-tier yield venue. Useful as a redundancy peer to a self-directed M1 or SoFi account so a single brokerage failure does not lock the whole investing layer.
Historical yield range
Personal Cash APY was most recently published around 3.75% (April 2025); the current official APY is not always re-stated on the main marketing page. Investing has no APY; returns are market-dependent. Rates change weekly; verify before deploying.
Integration notes
Regulatory: SEC-registered investment adviser (Empower Advisory Group LLC); brokerage accounts are SIPC-protected; cash deposits held at third-party partner banks. Fees: $0 online stock/ETF commissions on the first 1,000 trades, then some product-specific fees; advisory minimum and fee tiers apply. No formal cash lockup; investing withdrawal timing depends on brokerage/IRA rules.
Watch-outs
High minimum for investing; relatively high advisory fees; current official APY not always clearly disclosed on the main site; possible conflicts of interest from affiliated products.