FAQs - Frank

Topics:

Guarantees and Trust

Who are the humans behind Frank?

Behind Frank is a team of CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PROFESSIONALS® (CFP® professionals) with years of hands-on experience guiding people through real-life financial decisions. Whether you’re verifying an answer, facing a complex situation, or just want a second opinion, our CFP® professionals are here to support you with expert insight and judgment you can trust.

Can I trust AI to give me financial advice?

Yes, and here’s why. Frank is designed to deliver guidance you can actually rely on. Every response runs through guardrails and checks before it’s shared with you.

When you want to double-check something or talk through a decision, real financial professionals are available to help. Frank gives you fast, personalized answers, but there’s always a human behind the scenes when you need one.

What is the 30-day guarantee?

We want you to feel confident using Frank. If you're not satisfied within the first 30 days of use, you can request a full refund. No questions asked.

How are Frank and SmartPath connected?

Frank is offered by an investment adviser that is a subsidiary of SmartPath, Inc. (“SmartPath”). While SmartPath focuses on delivering financial education and coaching through employers and organizations, Frank is designed specifically for individuals who want personalized financial guidance from a financial advisor powered by AI, with human experts on call if you ever need a second opinion.

With over 15 years of experience and having supported more than 1 million people, SmartPath has developed deep expertise in financial education and behavioral coaching. That insight directly informs Frank, which is powered by a proprietary personal finance large language model (LLM) trained on real-world financial questions and challenges.

How Frank is Different

How is Frank different from ChatGPT or other AI chatbots?

While ChatGPT is a general-purpose AI assistant, Frank is purpose-built for personal financial planning. He’s trained on core financial principles and SmartPath’s proprietary insights.

What makes Frank even more powerful is his connection to your actual financial accounts. This means he doesn’t just give general advice; he gives personalized recommendations based on your real-time financial picture. If you asked ChatGPT, “Can I afford to retire at 62?” it would give a generic answer. Frank, on the other hand, analyzes your income, savings, benefits, and household situation to give advice that fits you.

Is there an asset minimum like with traditional financial advisors?

No. Unlike many financial advisors, Frank doesn’t require you to have a minimum level of assets. You can use it whether you’re just starting out or well into your financial journey.

How is Frank different from a typical robo-advisor?

Traditional robo-advisors mostly focus on managing investments. Frank helps you make informed decisions about all areas of your financial life, including planning, saving, taxes, and retirement. Frank’s goal isn’t to manage your money, but to help you make confident decisions by supporting you across all of these areas.

How is Frank different from a typical financial advisor or wealth manager?

Frank is an AI-powered financial advisor that offers personalized, unbiased financial advice by utilizing your complete financial background, not just your investments¹. Unlike traditional advisors who often focus on investment management and cater to clients with $1 million in investable assets, Frank assists you in making decisions related to retirement, taxes, benefits, healthcare, and more, regardless of your asset level. It features an interactive dashboard where you can view your accounts and track your goals.

¹ User must connect accounts and provide Frank with financial and non-financial information.

Product Experience

What kind of questions can I ask Frank?

Frank is designed to answer questions like:

“Can I afford to retire at 60?”
“Should I take the pension or the lump sum?”
“How much should I contribute to my HSA?”
“What’s the best way to lower my taxes this year?”
“Can we afford to send both kids to college?”

If you’re not sure what to ask, Frank can suggest high-impact financial moves based on your life stage and goals.

Does Frank integrate with my bank or employer?

Frank doesn’t directly integrate with banks or employers. Instead, you can securely connect your financial accounts using Plaid, a trusted platform that links to thousands of banks and credit institutions. This allows Frank to provide more personalized and accurate advice based on your real financial data without storing your login credentials.

Frank doesn’t require you to connect accounts to use it, but doing so unlocks more tailored guidance and simplifies your experience. While we don’t yet directly integrate with employer systems, some employer-specific benefits and scenarios may be supported in the future.

Is Frank right for me if I already have a financial advisor?

Yes. Frank can work alongside your advisor by helping you prepare questions, validate advice, and explore additional options. Think of Frank as a second opinion or a financial co-pilot.

Do I need to download an app to use Frank?

No download needed. Frank is fully web-based and mobile-optimized, so you can use it anywhere, anytime, from any internet-connected device.

Security and Data Privacy

How long will you retain my data if I close my account?

Due to SEC regulations, your data must be retained for 5 years, starting at the end of the fiscal year when you wish to terminate your service. So if you requested to cancel in March of 2025, your data wouldn’t be removed until January 2031.

The data we retain includes: conversations with Frank, any advice Frank provides, all communications and history, evidence of signed documents or agreements, risk tolerance questionnaire responses and results, payment history, any human advisor notes, communications and deliverables, and a list of any connected accounts, including last available account meta information and latest balance.

We do not retain: transaction data, historical balance data, account metadata like liabilities and holdings information, family information, Frank preferences and settings.

All data we retain during this period is completely secure.Note: User must connect accounts and provide Frank with financial and non-financial information.

If I connect my accounts, does Frank have any ability to move or manage my money?

No, Frank’s connection to accounts is read-only.

In the future, Frank may gain more superpowers to help manage your money, but any of these features would be opt-in only and require human approval first.

What information do you get if I connect my accounts?

With any connected account aggregator (e.g. Plaid), the information we receive varies by type of account and institution, but generally includes the following:

Balance
Transactions (up to 2 years on first connection)
Additional account information for liabilities (like credit card due date, APRs, etc) and Investments (like holdings)

Frank never has access to your full account number, your account password, or anything that could compromise your account with any connected institution.

Does my data train Frank?

No, Frank is not an AI model like ChatGPT that is constantly evolving based on direct user input. Instead, Frank is built on rules, guardrails, and evaluations based on how our users are interacting. Any learnings we incorporate into Frank’s setup are anonymized and stripped of Personally Identifiable Information (PII).

What data does OpenAI receive about me?

All information in Frank is available to and can be accessed by Frank chat, which is built on OpenAI's platform.

If you prefer not to share information with OpenAI, Frank may not be the right fit for you.

Is my data used to train OpenAI models?

No, we use OpenAI’s enterprise platform, and our agreement prevents OpenAI from using data from Frank for training.

How can I best secure my account?

We offer multi-factor authentication (MFA) to ensure no one else can ever gain access to your Frank account.

Do you share my data with anyone?

We only share your data with trusted service providers that help us run Frank (e.g., the technology partners who power our platform). We never sell your data or share it with advertisers like Meta or Google.

Because Frank is a paid product, your data isn’t “the product.” For full details, see our Privacy Policy.

Can anyone else access my data?

No one else can access your information. Your chats and data are private to your account, and Frank is designed so that each user’s information stays separate and secure.

Is my data secure?

Yes, since Frank’s inception, security has always been top of mind. Our parent company, SmartPath, Inc., has been SOC2 Type 2 certified for 5 years and counting.

Your data is secured with 256-bit encryption, both when it’s saved in our system and when it moves between your device(s) and our platform. We’re committed to maintaining best security practices across our organization, and will schedule our first SOC2 audit for Frank in mid 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions

Topics:

Guarantees and Trust

How Frank is Different

Product Experience

Security and Data Privacy

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