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The Fine Print of Acorns

  • Terms of Use
  • Wrap Fee Brochure
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Path to $1,000,000
  • Gift Card Terms
  • Referral Promotion Terms
  • Program Agreement
  • Privacy Policy
  • Important Disclosures
  • Acorns on Social Media
  • Referral Agreement
  • Business Continuity Plan
  • Contests and Promotions
  • Protect Legal and State Licenses
  • Form CRS

      Acorns Advisers, LLC and Acorns Securities, LLC

Customer Relationship Summary

Acorns Advisers, LLC (“Acorns Advisers”) is registered as an investment adviser and, its affiliate, Acorns Securities, LLC (“Acorns Securities” and together with Acorns Advisers, “we” or “us”) is registered as a broker-dealer with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Acorns Securities is also a member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. and the Securities Investor Protection Corporation.  This relationship summary is designed to provide you with information about the different services that we offer and how we charge for those services. Free and simple tools are available to research firms and financial professionals at Investor.gov/CRS, which also provides educational materials about broker-dealers, investment advisers, and investing.

What investment services and advice can you provide me?

·  We offer you the ability to invest in certain discrete investment portfolios with varying degrees of risk (the “Acorns Portfolios”) that each have target allocations of various equity and/or fixed income exchange-traded funds (“ETFs”). We will recommend you an Acorns Portfolio based on information that you give to us about yourself, including, among other things, your financial situation and objectives. We will not provide you any investment opportunities other than investments in certain specified ETFs in accordance with the Acorns Portfolios. 

·  Your portfolio will be managed by Acorns Advisers, an investment adviser, in accordance with the Acorns Portfolio that you select and/or we recommend to you.  You will be required to deposit the funds that you would like to invest in an account with Acorns Securities, a broker.  Acorns Advisers will use a software-based algorithm to place orders with Acorns Securities to buy, rebalance, and sell ETFs according to the target ETF allocations of your Acorns Portfolio. By combining the brokerage services offered by Acorns Securities and the advisory services offered by Acorns Advisers, we aim to simplify the investment process for you.

·  You have the option to open with Acorns Securities a standard investment account (“Acorns Invest”), an individual retirement account (“Acorns Later”) and/or a Uniform Transfer to Minors Act/Uniform Gift to Minors Act investment account (“Acorns Early”).  The minimum amount you are required to invest in each such account is $5.00.

·  As part of our relationship, you will grant Acorns Advisers discretion to buy and sell investments in your account(s) without asking you in advance.  Acorns Advisers will monitor and rebalance your account(s) with us on a periodic basis.  As explained in greater detail in the Firm Brochure of Acorns Advisers, Acorns Advisers will provide you with the ability to impose certain reasonable management restrictions on your portfolio by excluding one (or in certain cases more) of the ETFs that are part of an Acorns Portfolio.

·  Our parent company, Acorns Grow, Inc., together with various of its subsidiaries, offers a range of other products as part of our platform including Acorns Spend (“Acorns Spend”), which is a checking account offered through our partner bank, Lincoln Savings Bank, and Acorns Protect (“Acorns Protect”), which allows users to purchase certain insurance products.  These services are described in greater detail on our website: www.acorns.com.  

Ask us:

·  Given my financial situation, should I choose an investment advisory service? Should I choose a brokerage service? Should I choose both types of services? Why or why not?

·  How will you choose investments to recommend to me?

·  What is your relevant experience, including your licenses, education and other qualifications? What do these qualifications mean?

Detailed information about our advisory services can be found in our Firm Brochure.

What fees will I pay?

·  We will charge you a flat monthly fee in connection with our services irrespective of the size of your investments with us.  This fee is known as a “wrap fee” and covers the services of both Acorns Advisers and Acorns Securities.  We will not charge you a separate transaction-based fee when Acorns Securities facilitates an investment by you in an ETF.  If you have $1,000,000 or more invested with us, we will also charge you an asset-based fee in connection with the investment advisory services provided to you by Acorns Advisers.  For more information, please refer to our Program Agreement. 

·  We charge different tiers of flat monthly fees based on the types of accounts and other services that you subscribe to with us.  Our first fee tier, “Acorns Lite”, gives you access to an Acorns Invest account.  Our second fee tier, “Acorns Personal”, gives you access to an Acorns Invest account, an Acorns Later account and an Acorns Spend account.  Our third fee tier, “Acorns Family”, gives you access to an Acorns Invest account, an Acorns Later account, an Acorns Early account and an Acorns Spend account.  Each fee tier offers access to Acorns Protect and to certain financial wellness and education materials.  You can find detailed information about our different fee tiers on our website: www.acorns.com/pricing.  Our tiered fee structure gives us an incentive to encourage you to open more accounts with us and use more of our services.

Ask us:

·  Help me understand how these fees and costs might affect my investments. If I give you $1,000 to invest, how much will go to fees and costs, and how much will be invested for me?

You will pay fees and costs whether you make or lose money on your investments. Fees and costs will reduce any amount of money you make on your investments over time. Please make sure you understand what fees and costs you are paying.

What are your legal obligations to me when providing recommendations as my broker-dealer or when acting as my investment adviser? How else does your firm make money and what conflicts of interest do you have?

·  Due to the limited role of Acorns Securities described above, we will not provide recommendations as your broker-dealer. Rather, Acorns Advisers will act as your investment adviser and must act in your best interest and not put our interests ahead of yours. At the same time, the way we make money creates some conflicts with your interest. You should understand these conflicts and ask us about them because they can affect the services and investment advice we provide you.  Here are some examples to help you understand what this means:

·  As described in the “What fees will I pay?” section above, our tiered fee structure gives us an incentive to encourage you to open more accounts with us and use more of our services.

·  Additionally, when placing orders for various customers across portfolios, it may be necessary from time to time to aggregate orders, such as to achieve round lots, in such cases, some of the orders aggregated may include accounts in which we, our employees and/or principals have an economic interest, and it is possible that some orders receive better execution than others.

Ask us:

·  How might your conflicts of interest affect me, and how will you address them?

How do your financial professionals make money?

·  Our financial professionals are only paid flat salaries and do not have a variable component to their compensation.  Accordingly, our financial professionals do not have conflicts of interest with you based on their compensation structure such as financial professionals at other brokers or advisers who have a variable component of their compensation based directly or indirectly on the fees paid by you may have.

Do you or your financial professionals have legal or disciplinary history?

·  No. A free and simple search tool to research us and our financial professionals can be found at Investor.gov/CRS.

Ask us:

·   As a financial professional, do you have any disciplinary history? For what type of conduct?

Additional Information

For additional information about our services, you should visit www.acorns.com. You can request an up-to-date information or a copy of this relationship summary by calling (855) 739.2859 or emailing support@acorns.com.

Ask us:

·   Who is my primary contact person? Is he or she a representative of an investment adviser or a broker-dealer? Who can I talk to if I have concerns about how this person is treating me?

 

Have any questions?

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© 2020 Acorns | Disclosures | Accessibility

This website is operated by Acorns Advisers, LLC, an SEC Registered Investment Advisor.  Brokerage services are provided to clients of Acorns Advisers by Acorns Securities, LLC, an SEC registered broker-dealer and member FINRA.  Member of SIPC. Securities in your account protected up to $500,000. For details, please see https://www.sipc.org.

Important Disclosures:  Investing involves risk, including loss of principal.  Past performance does not guarantee or indicate future results.  Please consider, among other important factors, your investment objectives, risk tolerance and Acorns pricing before investing.  Diversification and asset allocation do not guarantee a profit, nor do they eliminate the risk of loss of principal.  It is not possible to invest directly in an index.  Any hypothetical performance shown is for illustrative purposes only. Such results do not represent actual results and do not take into consideration economic or market factors which can impact performance. Actual clients may achieve investment results materially different from the results portrayed. Round Up investments are transferred from your linked funding source (checking account) to your Acorns Invest account, where the funds are invested into a portfolio of selected ETFs. Only purchases made with a funding source linked to your Acorns account with the feature active are eligible for Round Up investments. Please note that a properly suggested portfolio recommendation is dependent upon current and accurate financial and risk profiles. Clients who have experienced changes to their goals, financial circumstances or investment objectives, or who wish to modify their portfolio recommendation, should promptly update their information in the Acorns app or through the website. Actual Found Money rewards investments are made by Acorns Grow, Inc. into your Acorns Invest account through a partnership Acorns Grow maintains with each Found Money partner.  Acorns Subscription Fees are assessed based on the tier of services in which you are enrolled.  Acorns does not charge transactional fees, commissions or fees based on assets for accounts under $1 million. Acorns Spend clients are not charged overdraft fees, maintenance fees, or ATM fees for cash withdrawals from ATMs within the Allpoint Network.  Please see your Acorns Subscription Center or Account Statements for a description of the fees you pay to Acorns for its services.  Third Party Quotes shown may not be representative of the experience of Acorns customers and do not represent a guarantee of future performance or success.  Please click on each testimonial to review the context from which this quote was taken. Acorns reserves the right to restrict or revoke any and all offers at any time.

Investors should consider the investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses of the funds carefully before investing.  This and other information are contained in the Fund’s prospectus.  Please read the prospectus carefully before you invest.

Acorns also offers an Acorns Spend deposit account. Acorns Spend accounts are FDIC insured up to $250,000. Acorns Visa™ debit cards are issued by Lincoln Savings Bank, member FDIC for Acorns Spend account holders.  "Save and Invest" claim refers to a client's ability to utilize the Acorns Spend Instant Round-up feature to set aside small amounts of money from purchases made using an Acorns Spend account, and seamlessly investing those small amounts using an Acorns Investment account.  Requires both an active Acorns Spend account and an Acorns Investment account in good standing.  Instant Round-ups are accrued instantly for investment during the next trading window.

For additional important risks, disclosures and information, please visit https://www.acorns.com/terms/