# Human Interest Advisors Human Interest Advisors is a Bank / Wealth / Trust based in San Francisco, United States. ## Overview - **Organization type:** Bank / Wealth / Trust - **Headquarters:** San Francisco, United States - **Region:** North America - **Address:** San Francisco, CA, United States - **Founded:** 2015 - **Assets under management:** Undisclosed - **Website:** humaninterest.com - **LinkedIn:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/humaninterest ## Regulatory record - **CRD number:** 269875 - **SEC file number:** 801-100429 - **Registration status:** APPROVED - **Latest Form ADV filing:** 2026-04-24T05:00:00.000Z - **Reports private funds:** No - **Private funds reported:** 0 - **IAPD record:** https://adviserinfo.sec.gov/firm/summary/269875 ## About Human Interest Advisors was formed in 2015 by Roger Lee and Paul Sawaya, who seeded the company through the Y Combinator accelerator program. CEO Jeff Schneble, appointed in 2017, refocused the firm squarely on the underserved micro- and small-business retirement market — companies with fewer than 100 employees that traditional providers like Fidelity or Vanguard often ignore due to low initial asset bases and high administrative friction. The firm is a registered investment advisor with a dual structure: a technology company (Human Interest Inc.) that builds the recordkeeping and administration platform, and an SEC-registered RIA subsidiary (Human Interest Advisors LLC) that delivers fiduciary advisory and discretionary management services to plan sponsors and participants. Wealth origin is not concentrated in a single family; the firm was venture-backed from inception, with named investors including SoftBank, BlackRock, and TPG. The firm's deployment strategy is exclusively focused on qualified retirement accounts — 401(k) plans, 403(b) plans, and IRAs — using a vertically integrated model. Unlike robo-advisors that target individual retail investors, Human Interest acquires customers through employer-plan sponsorship, making it a B2B2C platform. The investment lineup consists of proprietary model portfolios constructed from low-cost ETFs and mutual funds, mapped to participant risk tolerances via a digital onboarding flow. The firm acts as a 3(38) investment manager on many plans, taking full discretionary responsibility for fund selection and monitoring, which distinguishes it from recordkeeper-only platforms. Its geographic footprint covers all 50 US states, though its employer customer base is concentrated in California, Texas, Florida, and New York (per the firm's Form ADV filings, 2021–2023). Scale metrics have been disclosed intermittently. In August 2021, the firm announced it had surpassed $1 billion in plan assets under administration, a figure that had tripled over the prior 18 months (per the firm, August 2021). Subsequent funding rounds valued the parent entity at over $1 billion, earning it unicorn status. Headcount advisory and engineering staff numbers have not been publicly broken out for the RIA entity separately from the technology parent. The only known office is in San Francisco, with remote advisory staff distributed nationally. There is no disclosed philanthropic foundation or separate family-office structure linked to the firm. In September 2023, the company announced a new integration with Gusto's payroll platform, embedding 401(k) enrollment directly into the onboarding flow for Gusto's small-business customers (per a company blog post, September 2023). Human Interest's structural differentiator is its regulatory posture: it operates as a full-scope fiduciary under ERISA, yet its customer acquisition is purely software-driven, bypassing the traditional broker-dealer and benefits-consultant distribution channel. This lets the firm onboard a 5-employee landscaping business with the same unit economics as a 100-employee tech startup — a cost structure that compliance-heavy incumbents cannot easily replicate. The firm has also integrated a pooled employer plan (PEP) structure, allowing unrelated small businesses to join a single large 401(k) plan, reducing each employer's individual fiduciary burden. This PEP, launched in 2022, represents the clearest articulation of the firm's thesis that retirement coverage gaps are distribution problems, not product problems. ## Sectors - Retirement & Benefits ## People - Jeff Schneble — CEO ## Questions ### Is Human Interest Advisors a technology company or a registered investment advisor? It is both. The parent company, Human Interest Inc., builds and operates the retirement plan administration platform. Its wholly owned subsidiary, Human Interest Advisors LLC, is an SEC-registered investment advisor that provides fiduciary advice and discretionary portfolio management to plan sponsors and their employees. This dual structure allows the firm to serve as a 3(38) investment manager on the plans it administers, assuming full fiduciary responsibility for investment selection and monitoring. ### What is a 3(38) investment manager, and why does that designation matter for Human Interest's clients? Under ERISA Section 3(38), an investment manager assumes full discretionary authority and fiduciary responsibility for selecting, monitoring, and replacing plan investments. When Human Interest acts as a 3(38) on a client's 401(k) plan, the employer sponsor transfers that specific fiduciary liability to Human Interest. This is a more comprehensive standard than the 3(21) advisor role, which only makes recommendations that the plan sponsor must still approve. For small-business owners without in-house retirement expertise, the 3(38) designation makes Human Interest effectively the outsourced investment committee. ### What is a pooled employer plan, and does Human Interest offer one? A pooled employer plan (PEP) is a 401(k) structure authorized under the SECURE Act of 2019 that allows multiple unrelated employers to participate in a single retirement plan. Human Interest launched its PEP in 2022, serving as the named fiduciary and plan administrator. The key advantage for participating small businesses is that they share administrative costs, reduce their individual fiduciary liability, and delegate nearly all compliance responsibilities to Human Interest — features that make offering a 401(k) viable for companies with only a handful of employees. ### Is Human Interest a fiduciary to plan participants, not just to plan sponsors? Under ERISA, a 3(38) investment manager's fiduciary duty runs to the plan and its participants and beneficiaries, not to the employer sponsor. When Human Interest acts in that capacity, its investment decisions must serve the exclusive purpose of providing benefits to participants and defraying reasonable plan expenses. The firm's Form ADV discloses this fiduciary status and the associated conflicts, including its use of proprietary model portfolios and revenue received from the plan recordkeeping relationship. ## Related profiles - [Hull Wealth Management](https://altss.com/profile/hull-wealth-management) - [Human Investing](https://altss.com/profile/human-investing) --- Last updated: 2026-08-10T20:11:24.188Z Canonical page: https://altss.com/profile/human-interest-advisors Maintained by Altss — https://altss.com — methodology: https://altss.com/methodology