MoneyLion review

The management fee on managed investing is listed as 0%, so the automated portfolio carries no advisory charge in the published pricing. The minimum investment to open is $1, which keeps the starting point low for a starter deposit.

You can open a managed portfolio from $1. For comparison, eToro's managed portfolios ask for $500 and Axos Invest sets $100, so MoneyLion asks for the smallest starting amount of those providers.

The service is run by MoneyLion Technologies Inc., founded in 2013 and headquartered in the United States. Because the provider is US based, the account terms, the funds on offer and the tax treatment of the money are set for a US investor rather than a UK or European one.

The managed range is built on etf portfolios, so the fund choice is made for you rather than assembled by hand. That is the most common robo-advisor portfolio type on BrokerCue, used by 87.5% of the providers reviewed. The trade-off is less variety.

Support runs on email, phone and help centre, which covers email, phone, a help centre and a community, but not live chat. A self-service help centre is the most widely offered channel on BrokerCue at 84.6%, and phone support reaches 56.7% of providers, so the mix here is in line with the category.

MoneyLion is a US service: it is headquartered in the United States and run as MoneyLion Technologies Inc., and its managed investing pages are written for that market. UK and European readers comparing a euro or sterling plan may find a provider built for their market a closer fit, such as Vivid Standard, whose fees run 0.5% to 1.5%.

Automation does not remove market risk, since an ETF portfolio still moves with the markets it tracks. Across robo-advisors on BrokerCue, the share of retail accounts sitting at a loss runs at 70.15% and stretches from 65.75% to 74.5%, so a long time horizon matters more than the fee.

Vivid Standard prices its business plans with fees of 0.5% to 1.5%, a fee range rather than the 0% charge at MoneyLion. The two are hard to compare on cost alone, so the portfolio range and the entry point, $1, tend to settle it.