SoFi Invest Review 2020

SoFi Invest has low trading and non-trading fees. It offers commission-free trades for US stocks and ETFs, and no fee is charged for inactivity or withdrawals.

How we ranked fees

We ranked SoFi Invest's fee levels as low, average or high based on how they compare to those of all reviewed brokers.

To get things rolling, let's go over some lingo related to broker fees. What you need to keep an eye on are trading fees, and non-trading fees.

• Trading fees occur when you trade. These can be commissions, spreads, financing rates and conversion fees.
• Non-trading fees include charges not directly related to trading, like withdrawal fees or inactivity fees.

In the sections below, you will find the most relevant fees of SoFi Invest for each asset class. For example, in the case of stock investing the most important fees are commissions.

We also compared SoFi Invest's fees with those of two similar brokers we selected, Robinhood and Fidelity. This selection is based on objective factors such as products offered, client profile, fee structure, etc. See a more detailed rundown of SoFi Invest alternatives.

To have a clear overview of SoFi Invest, let's start with the trading fees.

SoFi Invest trading fees

SoFi Invest has low stock and ETF fees, while its crypto fees are OK.

Stock fees and ETF fees

SoFi Invest charges no commission for stock and ETF trading.

Crypto fees

SoFi Invest has okay cryptocurrency fees. It charges a 1.25% mark-up, which is higher than rival Robinhood's 0.00% mark-up.

Non-trading fees

SoFi Invest has low non-trading fees. It doesn't charge an inactivity fee or ACH withdrawal fees. If you use a wire transfer for withdrawal, however, SoFi Invest charges $25.

Account opening at SoFi Invest is seamless and fully digital; our account was opened within a day. On the flip side, only US clients can open an account.

Can you open an account?

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Only US citizens and green card holders can open an active investing account at SoFi Invest. In the case of robo-advisory accounts, visa holders are also considered.

What is the minimum deposit at SoFi Invest?

There is no required minimum deposit for SoFi Invest accounts. This is ideal if you plan to invest smaller amounts only.

Account types

There are basically two main service types you can choose from:

• SoFi Invest active investing - a self-directed investment account where you can trade stocks and ETFs on your own.
• SoFi Invest automated investing - a robo-advisory-based service where SoFi Invest handles your investments.

In this review, we tested the SoFi Invest active investing account. Within the SoFi Invest active investing category, you can also select tax-advantaged IRA accounts (Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, SEP IRA). Corporate accounts are not available.

How to open your account

The account opening process is user-friendly, fully digital and fast. The online application process takes roughly 20 minutes, and it took 1 business day for our account to be verified.

You need to go through the following steps to open a SoFi Invest account:

1. Register a SoFi account by entering your name, email address and a password
2. Acknowledge terms and conditions
3. Choose between the self-directed and robo-advisory account types
4. Fill in personal information, like your address, phone number and employment status
5. Provide your residency, Social Security Number or other ID details as prompted
6. Review your information plus add financial data and preferences
7. Choose your funding method

SoFi Invest offers user-friendly and mostly free deposit and withdrawal options. However, you can use only bank transfers, while wire transfer withdrawals incur a high fee.

Account base currencies

At SoFi Invest, you can hold your cash only in USD.

If you have a personal bank account in a currency other than USD, you will be charged a conversion fee.

A convenient way to save on currency conversion fees is by opening a multi-currency bank account at a digital bank. They offer bank accounts in several currencies with great currency exchange rates as well as free or cheap international bank transfers. Opening an account only takes a few minutes on your phone.

Compare digital banks

Deposit fees and options

SoFi Invest charges no deposit fees. US clients can use checks, ACH and wire transfers to fund their account.

A SoFi Invest deposit feature that we thought was great was automatic funding. Once you initiate a bank transfer deposit, SoFi Invest instantly credits your account with this amount (up to $5,000), even though it has not yet come through from your bank account (a process that can normally take two business days). In effect, SoFi Invest is fronting the money for you, which we thought was great for instant trading. This feature compensates for the fact that deposit via credit/debit cards and electronic wallets -- which is normally executed instantly -- is not possible at SoFi Invest.

We tested ACH transfer for deposit and it took 2 business days. You can only deposit money from accounts that have been previously linked to your brokerage account, and which are in your name.

Withdrawal fees and options

SoFi Invest charges no fees for ACH withdrawal. Wire transfers, on the other hand, cost $25 per withdrawal.

How long does it take to withdraw money from SoFi Invest? We tested the ACH bank transfer and it took 2 business days.

You can only withdraw money to accounts that are in your name.

How do you withdraw money from SoFi Invest? You can withdraw money from SoFi Invest by selecting 'Withdraw Money' under the 'Settings' menu.

Compare to other brokers

SoFi Invest offers a user-friendly web trading platform with a neat design. However, it lacks customizability, unique price alerts, and many common order types.

SoFi Invest offers a web trading platform developed in-house. It is available only in English.

Look and feel

The SoFi Invest web trading platform is user-friendly and has a neat design, tailored mainly to the needs of investors rather than traders. It has few customization options, and lacks handy search tools.

Login and security

SoFi Invest offers two-step login. You can turn it on in the 'My profile' menu under 'Account settings'.

Search functions

The web platform's search functions are OK. We missed the screener function, and it is somewhat hard to carry out detailed searches. As a plus, it is easy to put assets on a watchlist.

Placing orders

SoFi Invest offers only market and limit orders. It lacks other basic order types such as stop or stop limit. It doesn't offer order time limits either.

If you are not familiar with the basic order types, read this overview.

Alerts and notifications

You can choose from only a few pre-set alerts, like a notification when the price of a stock or ETF on your watchlist reaches a 52-week high or low. We missed unique and customizable alerts, like being notified when an asset reaches a certain price level.

You can turn on pre-set alerts in the 'My profile' menu under 'Push Notification Preferences'.

Portfolio and fee reports

SoFi Invest offers a clear portfolio report. You shouldn't expect much in the way of a fee report, as SoFi Invest rarely charges any fees.

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The SoFi Invest mobile platform is great; it is well-designed and user-friendly. However, only a few order types are available, and there are no unique price alerts.

The SoFi Invest mobile trading platform is available on both iOS and Android devices. We tested it on iOS.

The SoFi Invest mobile platform has the same design and the same functions as the web trading platform. For mobile trading platforms, our scoring algorithm assigns a higher weight to the app's simplicity and ease-of-use than it does in the case of web trading platforms. This is the main reason why the SoFi Invest mobile trading platform has a higher score than the web trading platform.

In another plus, the SoFi Invest mobile trading platform also offers biometric authentication on compatible devices.

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SoFi Invest does not offer a desktop trading platform.

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SoFi Invest has a limited product portfolio comprising US stocks and ETFs as well as a few cryptocurrencies. You can't trade funds, bonds, forex, options or futures.

SoFi Invest has average stock and ETF selections. You can also trade 3 cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum. 

Stock and ETF

SoFi Invest gives you access only to the US market. You can trade stocks on the NYSE, NASDAQ and AMEX exchanges. Compared with its immediate competitors, this market selection is roughly on par with Robinhood's, but lags behind that of Fidelity, which also grants access to international stock exchanges.

You can't trade low-priced stocks (“penny stocks”) and OTC products at SoFi Invest. We liked the "Stock Bits" feature, though, which allows you to buy fractional shares. It's great for investors looking to invest only smaller amounts at a time.

SoFi Invest Automated Investing

Besides SoFi Invest active investing, you can use SoFi automated investing, a robo-advisory service. This is a great option if you need help managing your investments.

To get started, first you have to answer a few questions and select your risk preference. SoFi Invest then assembles a portfolio and rebalances it automatically when needed.

There is no annual management fee for SoFi Invest's robo-advisory service. This is a plus, as most robo-advisors charge an annual management fee of about 0.20-0.50% of assets.

Research tools at SoFi Invest are very limited, lacking analyst recommendations, detailed fundamental data and sophisticated charting tools.

Trading ideas

SoFi Invest does not provide professional trading ideas. You can view the most heavily traded stocks by other SoFi investors for a given day, but we missed professional recommendations by third-party providers. There is another recommendation bar that shows trending stocks and ETFs by sector.

Fundamental data

SoFi Invest provides very little fundamental data. For stocks, SoFi Invest gives a short summary of the company, its history, and the geographical markets and product or service lines it is active in. It also provides current indicators like Market Cap and Price to Market Cap. However, it is lacking more in-depth data.

Charting

SoFi Invest has limited charting tools. There are no technical indicators or more sophisticated charting tools like a trendline editor. 

News feed

The news feed consists only of links to third-party websites. There are no archive feeds or visual elements like charts or tables. 

Compare research pros and cons

SoFi Invest's customer service is great, as it gives fast and relevant answers. On the flip side, there is no 24/7 service.

You can contact SoFi Invest via:

• live chat
• telephone

SoFi Invest has a fast live chat. The relevancy of the answers was satisfactory.

SoFi Invest's telephone support gave relevant and helpful answers. The speed was OK as we had to wait about a minute before someone was connected. However, we missed 24/7 availability.

It's also a nice feature that you can email the CEO's office. We emailed the CEO and got both a phone call and an email response from the CEO's office.

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SoFi Invest offers offers some educational content on its blog and YouTube channel, but there are no demo accounts, platform tutorials or webinars.

At SoFi Invest, you can learn with the help of educational articles available on the SoFi blog, but these are not very well structured. The YouTube channel is separate from the SoFi website and can be hard to locate if you want access to eduational content quickly and easily.

The FAQ is also hard to search and not well structured.

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SoFi Invest is regulated by top-tier financial authorities and comes with a high investor protection amount. On the negative side, it is not listed on a stock exchange and doesn't publish any financial information.

Is SoFi Invest regulated? Yes, it is regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).

Is SoFi Invest safe? To be certain, it is best to check two things: how you are protected if something goes wrong and what the background of the broker is.

How you are protected

This is important for you because the investor protection amount and the regulator differ from entity to entity. With SoFi Invest this is not an issue, as all customers belong to SoFi Securities LLC and are covered by the US SIPC investor protection scheme. The SIPC investor protection scheme protects against the loss of cash and securities in case the broker goes bust. The limit of SIPC protection is $500,000, which includes a $250,000 limit for cash. This amount is substantially higher than what most other investor protection schemes provide.

Not all investments are protected by SIPC, though. In general, SIPC covers notes, stocks, bonds, mutual funds and other investment company shares, and other registered securities. It does not cover instruments such as unregistered investment contracts, unregistered limited partnerships, fixed annuity contracts, currency, and interests in gold, silver, or other commodity futures contracts or commodity options.

Background

SoFi was established in 2011, while the SoFi Invest branch was founded in 2018. The longer the track record of a broker, the more proof we have that it has successfully survived previous financial crises.

Among the few negatives, publicly available financial information about SoFi Invest is quite limited compared to other brokers.

However, being a US-regulated broker and offering a high amount of investor protection are still all great signs for SoFi Invest's safety.

Find your safe broker

SoFi Invest's fees are great. You can trade stocks and ETFs listed on major US markets for free. Account opening is easy, fully digital and fast. Customer service responds quickly and gives relevant answers.

SoFi Invest has some drawbacks though. It is available only for US clients. Its product portfolio is fairly limited, covering only US stocks, ETFs, and a few cryptocurrencies. Lastly, research tools are very basic.

As the account opening process is seamless and SoFi Invest offers commission-free stock and ETF trades, you should feel free to try it.

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