Last year, digital asset managers outperformed the broader stock market with their products, some significantly. So-called robo-advisors with offensive strategies that are allowed to invest entirely in stocks and do not focus on sustainability achieved an average return of 10.2 percent before fees in 2025.
This is shown by an annual evaluation by the consultant firm Fondsconsult. For comparison: The global stock index MSCI All Country World (ACWI) achieved a return of 7.9 percent in 2025 - also calculated in euros.
In an overall good year for stocks, many robo-advisors in 2025 benefited, among other things, from the gold content in their portfolios. The Handelsblatt shows which offers have developed particularly well in recent years according to Fondsconsult - and which market trends investors are benefiting from.
Robo-advisors are digital asset managers who automatically put together individual portfolios based on customer requests. Investments are made in exchange-traded funds (ETFs), classic investment funds or individual stocks. The ExtraETF platform estimates that robo-advisors in Germany recently managed more than 128 billion euros.
Fondsconsult has evaluated a good two dozen strategies available in Germany from 17 providers. Because the advisors rely on information from the providers, the evaluation does not include all available robo-advisors. The study should still cover a large part of the market: Raisin, Scalable Capital, Growney and Visualvest, the largest providers according to ExtraETF, are also included in Fondsconsult.
According to Andreas Hackethal, professor of finance at Frankfurt's Goethe University, what is crucial for investors is whether they consider the price of the offers to be justified. According to Fondsconsult, the management fees for German robos recently averaged just over 0.7 percent. There are also product costs.
Hackethal once sat on the supervisory board of the robo provider Vaamo, which is no longer represented on the German market. He names two groups of investors for whom the strategies can in principle be suitable. On the one hand, there are “delegators” who do not want to delve deeper into their portfolio to save time or convenience. On the other hand, there were “self-disciplinarians” who were looking for a simple structure that would not force them to sell, even in times of crisis.
Fondsconsult differentiates between strategies with and without a sustainability focus. The approaches are also divided into four risk classes: from a defensive portfolio with a maximum of 40 percent stocks and a high proportion of bonds to offensive strategies that can invest entirely in stocks. Returns are shown before management fees.
The provider Ginmon achieved the highest annual return among the offensive portfolios examined in 2025. The ETF-based provider's conventional strategy gained 14.3 percent in value last year. This is followed by an offensive strategy from Minveo and a portfolio with a sustainability focus from Commerzbank-Robos Cominvest.
Many robo strategies are likely to have benefited from their gold position last year, among other things. The price of the precious metal rose by 45 percent in 2025. Fondsconsult analyst Maximilian Wellner says: "Some robo-advisors had invested up to 20 percent of their portfolio in gold. That of course drove performance last year."
Upon request, Minveo, for example, named gold as the strongest single return driver for the offensive portfolio. The strategy also benefited from momentum stocks and an alternative country weighting.
However, the returns of the individual strategies are very different. For example, the weakest offensive portfolio achieved a return of just 0.7 percent in 2025.
According to the evaluation, over a period of three years, neither conventional nor sustainable offensive strategies managed to beat the broad stock market on average. Last year, sustainable robo strategies achieved lower returns than comparable conventional strategies at all risk levels.
For an overall assessment, Fondsconsult evaluated the returns of the robo strategies before management costs in the years 2023 to 2025. In addition, risk indicators such as the fluctuation in value and the maximum losses were taken into account. Supplemented by qualitative criteria such as costs, service and product range, the analysts award an overall grade.
Accordingly, Minveo performed best overall among the conventional strategies. In addition to portfolio managers, the Munich-based fintech relies on artificial intelligence (AI) to manage customer portfolios at short notice. According to the provider, AI has long been the “core of risk management”.
Fondsconsult analyst Lukas Welger-Merkel praises the comparatively low portfolio fluctuations and returns last year. Among the conventional strategies, the consultants also rate Quirion's digital asset manager, Quirin Bank's robo-advisor, and Cominvest positively.
Fondsconsult also highlights Cominvest among the approaches with a focus on sustainability. The robo-advisor from the Commerzbank brand Comdirect is the only provider that has performed better with sustainable strategies in almost all risk levels than with conventional strategies, says Wellner. Upon request, Comdirect explains the differences with, among other things, different gold positions and bond strategies.
Ginmon's sustainable strategy also performs well at Fondsconsult. Welger-Merkel justifies this with an “above-average risk-return profile”. The consultants also highlight the Quirion strategy with a focus on sustainability.
The German market for robo-advisors is considered saturated. The providers not only compete with each other, but also with neobrokers like Trade Republic. This in turn has a positive effect for investors: According to Welger-Merkel, the high competitive pressure is reducing management fees. “The cost pressure has increased,” he says.
According to Fondsconsult, two providers, Bevestor, the savings banks' digital asset manager, and Cominvest, each reduced their management fees by 0.2 percentage points last year.
Wellner is also observing more and more individual products. In the past, robo-advisors often only offered standard strategies with few risk levels, he says. “Investors are increasingly looking for more individual products that also include investments in thematic funds or alternative investments such as gold.”
Financial scientist Hackethal sees even more possibilities here. “The greatest potential for robo-advisors lies in even more personalized portfolios,” he says. AI could “deliver a lot in the future” here.
