What are the benefits of a robo-advisor?
Although robo-advisors have been criticized for not being able to accommodate sudden changes in situations, market volatility, or directional moves in the market, a robo-advisor can do the job for most people who want some kind of financial account in most years. It's true they can't predict the future, but neither can human advisors (although human advisors can often turn to experience to make hard decisions in difficult market conditions).
Here are a few things robo-advisors do really well:
Save you money. If you don't need anything fancy and just want a basket of ETFs and index funds, a robo-advisor can handle this with ease. No need to pay more for these very basic offerings; instead, that extra money can go toward your retirement plans.
Respond 24/7. Unlike humans who need to sleep, robo-advisors are computer programs that can be reached at any time of the day or night. If you want to check your account balance or see how the robo-advisor has reallocated your account funds, it's simple to check when you have the time to sit down in a quiet place and focus.
Execute trades efficiently. Although you are highly limited in the types of accounts you can invest in, trades are executed in an efficient manner -- often, the moment your accounts go outside of their rebalancing bands. With a human, you'd have to wait until they are able to execute the trade manually, which could result in more loss.
Tax loss harvesting. It doesn't seem like a big deal, but tax-loss harvesting can save you so much money in taxes that it should be considered one of the most important jobs of a robo-advisor. With tax-loss harvesting, you essentially sell specific investments at a loss to offset gains in other investments, which is a very time-consuming job for a human.