J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors Review [2024]: Relatively Low-Fee Service From an Established Bank

Key takeaways

• J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors integrates with the broader Chase banking platform. I'm a fan of convenience, so it's great that I can see my investments along with my banking and loan accounts online and on the Chase app.
• I understand that not everyone is an investment expert. In addition to professional portfolio management, I like that J.P. Morgan provides educational materials on investing strategies, the inner workings of the market, and more.
  
• While J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors has a minimum of $25,000, clients with a balance of less than $250,000 don't get a dedicated personal advisor. Instead, they get access to a team of advisors rather than one point of contact.

What is J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors?

J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors is an investment platform launched by J.P. Morgan Wealth Management (an arm of JP Morgan Chase & Co.) in late 2022. The service offers a hybrid approach to wealth management. It provides access to a human financial professional while offering investment portfolio management.

With J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors, you benefit from personalized guidance from human financial advisors while leveraging the cost efficiency of an automated investment platform. This hybrid model is how J.P. Morgan provides professional advisory services at a relatively low annual fee ranging from 0.5% to 0.6%, which is lower than what many conventional advisors charge.

Personal Advisors is one of the advisor products within J.P. Morgan Wealth Management (JPMWM). JPMWM has about 5,500 advisors nationwide and handles over $900 billion in assets under supervision.

How does J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors work?

Investing with J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors is pretty straightforward. Once you submit a contact form, an advisor will reach out to schedule an initial phone or video call to guide you through building your investment portfolio.

During this first meeting, you’ll discuss your financial priorities and goals, risk tolerance, and current financial situation to determine the investments that work best for you. The extra time they take to understand your circumstances upfront can give you confidence in their recommendations. They aren't offering one-size-fit-all investment advice.

J.P. Morgan says it may take two to three meetings to fully discuss and match you to a portfolio based on the information you provide, which I think is a bit of a long process. However, once you've reviewed your proposed financial plan and are ready to proceed, the advisor will submit your application and work with you to fund the account.

After creating your account, you can check your portfolio and other financial accounts on Chase.com or in the Chase Mobile App. This integrated view enables you to see your entire financial picture and net worth in one convenient place, which I find very useful.

J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors’ minimum balance

To qualify for an account, you’ll need at least $25,000 in investable assets. This isn't a small sum of money, but in my view, it's a reasonable minimum that makes this service accessible to more investors. I've reviewed many investment advisory services and J.P. Morgan is one of few that offer this level of service at this investment level. Most other services require $150,000 or more to get comparable services.

J.P. Morgan states that all of their advisors are fiduciaries, meaning they must offer advice in your best interest, not just sell you a product. This is an important safeguard that I really appreciate. Although you’ll work with a specific advisor to get your account set up and funded, if you have questions for your financial advisor or need to make changes to your portfolio, you may meet with a different advisor.

If you have an opening balance of $250,000 or more, you can choose to be assigned a dedicated financial advisor to answer questions and help you make adjustments to your financial plan.

Goals and financial plans with J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors

As part of working with J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors, they'll ask about your personal goals and objectives. While helping you manage your money is part of what a financial advisor does, having specific goals to work toward, like retirement or buying a home, can help you ensure you’re making progress and using an effective strategy.

The advisor will ask you various questions that could influence how your financial plan is built, including:

• Personal needs and goals
• Total wealth
• Tax jurisdiction
• Cash flow
• Projected spending
• Risk tolerance

Based on your answers, J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors will help you create a financial plan during your initial meeting.

The advisor will develop a financial plan for you that includes projections illustrating how long it may take to achieve your goals based on your current financial situation and different potential scenarios. The platform will also periodically rebalance your portfolio to maintain your financial plan, which is a nice hands-off feature.

To help ensure your portfolio stays aligned with this plan over time, the J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors platform will periodically rebalance your investments. The platform will do this by buying or selling assets in your portfolio to maintain course and get you closer to your goal over time.

J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors’ portfolio options

Once your goals are established, the advisor will match you to a pre-built portfolio of mutual funds and ETFs that best fit your objectives and timeline. While I appreciate the convenience of pre-built portfolios, I wish there was more flexibility to customize beyond the set options.

Portfolios typically comprise various ETFs and mutual funds from J.P. Morgan but can also include assets from other third-party banks and brokerages. Socially-conscious investors like myself will appreciate the availability of portfolio options focused on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors.

You can’t add individual stocks or bonds to your J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors portfolio, only those pre-selected and approved by the fund developers. This is a limitation that I don't like, as it keeps me from investing in a stock that I like or a company that I support.

While a certain level of customization is allowed in the J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors platform, you can't change your portfolio directly. Instead, you must request changes from your advisor when your goals or financial plans change. Personally, I find this restrictive, but it's a common practice when working with a personal advisor.

The good thing is that you can reach out to your advisor at any time, and J.P. Morgan recommends meeting at least annually with an advisor to discuss your progress and to make any needed changes.

J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors’ fees

The J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors program charges a fee for its services. The fee amount is based on your account balance with J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors, also called your assets under management (AUM).

Its advisory fee structure is:

I find these annual advisory fees pretty reasonable, especially at the lowest tier for larger account balances. However, I recommend paying attention to additional fund expenses as these directly impact how much you end up paying.

Rebalancing and taxes with J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors

As your portfolio changes, Personal Advisors will buy or sell assets to bring the portfolio back into alignment with the original investment objective. This is called portfolio rebalancing, and the J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors platform will automatically perform it to stick to your investment strategy.

Additionally, account transactions over the year are likely subject to income and capital gains taxes. An effective way to reduce your potential taxes is tax-loss harvesting or offsetting capital gains with capital losses, which may help reduce your tax bill. J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors began offering automatic tax-loss harvesting in 2024, which greatly simplifies the process for you. 

Education via J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors

J.P. Morgan Wealth Management has a variety of educational articles, videos, and slide shows about investing and the current state of the market. The Know newsletter and knowledge base help keep investors updated on market happenings, research, and analysis. 

New investors may find the how-to-start investing video guides particularly helpful since they outline a step-by-step process to joining the market.

J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors’ security

J.P. Morgan takes online security seriously and invests in several different strategies to keep your account safe, including:

• Secured data centers
• Network firewalls
• Multi-factor authentication
• Required password changes
• Alerts on accounts
• Intrusion detection

Additionally, J.P. Morgan is a member of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) and offers up to $500,000 in insurance protection for the securities and cash against a brokerage failure.

Alternatives to J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors

I find J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors an excellent option for people who like having a financial advisor but don’t want to pay the expensive fees.

However, with a minimum balance of $25,000 and a percentage-based fee, J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors might not be the right fit for everyone.

Consider one of the following options for investing money.

Betterment

Betterment offers a modern robo-advisor that helps you automate your investments based on goals that you determine. 

Betterment uses low-cost ETFs along with a high-yield cash account to help you progress toward your goals. This automated service has a $0 minimum balance and a low fee of $4 a month for balances under $20,000, or an annual fee of 0.25% for higher balances.

I appreciate that the low entry requirement makes investing with Betterment more accessible to everyone. Plus, I'm a fan of Betterment's user-friendly interface and sleek mobile app. 

Your portfolio with Betterment receives automatic rebalancing and tax-loss harvesting at no additional cost. However, to get access to human advisors, you'd need Betterment Premium. The premium service has a high minimum requirement of $100,000 and an annual advisory fee of 0.65%.  

Learn more in our Betterment review.

Schwab Intelligent Portfolios Premium

Schwab Intelligent Portfolios Premium accounts only require a $25,000 minimum investment and have a monthly fee structure. This $25,000 minimum is on par with J.P. Morgan's offering.

When you start with Schwab, you’ll pay a one-time fee of $300 for your initial consultation. From there, you’ll pay a monthly fee (billed quarterly) of $30 to continue receiving access to investment advisors. I find the monthly fee model a bit more palatable than an annual percentage because Schwab's monthly fee is going to be lower than J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors' annual advisory fee if your balance is more than $90,000. 

Schwab’s portfolios are invested in ETFs, and part of your portfolio may be placed in an FDIC-insured deposit at Schwab Bank.

Learn more in our Charles Schwab review.

Vanguard Personal Advisor

Although similar in function to J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors, the Vanguard Personal Advisor charges annual advisory fees between 0.30% and 0.40% but has a higher minimum balance — $50,000.

It provides access to fiduciary investment advisors and utilizes Vanguard's ETFs and mutual funds for investing diversification, which I likes because Vanguard's funds tend to have lower expenses.

Vanguard Personal Advisor offers portfolio management for eligible 401(k) accounts, Traditional IRAs, Roth IRAs, Rollover IRAs, and other taxable accounts.

J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors FAQ

J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors review: bottom line

J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors stands out amongst its competitors by offering access to fiduciary investment advisors for a relatively low cost and low investment minimum. It can be a good option for people uncomfortable with investing independently. However, those who like to set up and manage their portfolios directly may feel limited by having to go through a financial advisor.

However, J.P. Morgan Personal Advisors has some drawbacks, including the inability to directly manage your portfolio or access a dedicated advisor for balances under $250,000. If these are dealbreakers, I suggest considering Schwab Intelligent Portfolios Premium or exploring more options in our list of the best robo-advisors.