Owning stocks is ‘a privilege of the few’: Betterment CEO

Betterment CEO Sarah Levy joins 'Influencers with Andy Serwer' to discuss digital trading and increased access to the stock market.

Video Transcript

ANDY SERWER: Recent analysis by "The New York Times" of Federal Reserve data shows that the top 10% families in the United States own 84% of the equities in this country. Do you think that this inequity is beginning to change? And do you have any data that shows that?

SARAH LEVY: So I think definitely we saw sort of a K recovery, or we're seeing a K recovery, as they talk about it, coming out of COVID. And I think there's no question that owning stocks and equities is a privilege of the few. It is a privilege of the few, to your point, with your statistic. And so I would say to you, no, while we've democratized finance to some extent, we've made it accessible, you still need funds to be able to put into those vehicles.

And there's still an incredible wealth disparity in this country. And so we know that as stocks rise and as taxes are put on corporations, the lion's share of that wealth is accruing at the upper end. I think, there are, obviously, as we see in the government, there's pressure around minimum wage, right, and raising minimum wage. There's pressure through transparency around the disparity between income-- between the salaries of CEOs and their employees.

So I think there's a lot of information being brought to bear. But we've got a lot of work to do as a country before the market is really an equitable place for all to acquire more wealth.