Originally Posted by Stockjock

Just so you know, there is nothing that they are "pushing", per se.

There is a responsibility to "know your customer" aka KYC, so when they open an account, they need to ask certain questions to understand who they are dealing with and what the client's objectives are. So can they simply open up an account asking few or no questions? No, they cannot.

Also, bear in mind that there's a decent chance they're not getting paid on any of this, so most questions asked are because they have to, and in some cases, because they actually do care and want to assist their clients in meeting their goals. I'm not sure what the situation is with the Virtual Advisors. Perhaps they have some way to get compensated on smaller accounts. I suspect these "minimum" accounts would not be a good fit for most others.