Kitces (along with Josh Brown and Mike Alfred) took umbrage at Stein’s depiction of human advisors as pigs. Stein relented a bit but he’d made his point — that his critics were only touchy because of the threat posed by his robo-technology. Now Stein now sees the fracas as ancient history. “There were some bumps in the road long ago, but once we took the time to get to know each other a bit better, we both quickly discovered that we shared many of the same views on the industry and how Betterment could work with advisors.” Steve Winks made a great point on RIABIZ on March 2, “Wouldn’t it be great if “robo-advisors” were to actually get into advice in a serious way. The need for improvement is immense as there presently is no reference point to high level expert, authenticated, individualized advice. There are big holes in what robo advice does not do.The replication of the broker approach to advice which simply sells advice as a product, can cut as much as 90% of the cost out of a very low threshold of advice, but does not approach professional counsel. That will come with time and experience many years from now..”