I think that there are 2 things that will likely continue to help robo advisors:<p>1) Vanguard or Charles Schwab products that do automated investing likely take an opinionated approach towards only owning their own assets. This means that the amount of the investable market I can actually buy into at any point is much smaller, and possibly less optimal. I imagine this also has an impact on how effective the robo advisor can tax loss harvest.<p>2) Betterment has shown their cards (in my opinion) once they started allowing users to link external accounts. Initially it has been exposed as a way to track networth and investment progress towards your goals. However, I'm not convinced it will stop there. The obvious next step is that Betterment will manage your asset allocation, monitor wash sales, etc across all of your investment accounts, regardless of whether they actually have the money invested through them directly. In this way, they are an ambivalent service that you pay for.