The recession brought on by the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 affected millions of people from all edges of the world. The result was the loss of somewhere between $12.8 trillion and $22 trillion in assets, depending on estimates from non-profit group Better Marks and the Global Accountability Office, respectively. In fact, the average investor lost nearly a quarter of their 401 K as a result; making many would-be investors a little gun-shy to continue investing their money.

Now, over five years removed from the end of the recession, Americans have slowly began to reintroduce their capital to money markets. Nearly 10 million new people have invested in the past year, and much of that is due to the millennial generation coming of age. If there is one thing that millennials are known for, it is the acceptance of the use of technology. There are now some options that new investors can use, if, like many other investors, they don’t have access to a money manager they can completely trust.

In the 1990s, day-trading was all the rage. This is where investors would make several transactions a day with the intention of making incremental advances. Some people were able to get enormously wealthy doing this, but the majority of people that attempted it, were unsuccessful. As this practice has fallen out of the public limelight, and basically out of favor with even the most untrusting investors, many single investors are now placing their money with a new type of money manager, in the form of software.

Utilizing this high-end software has somewhat become a trend for investors today. This technology introduces investors to automated brokers; robots that are programmed to track the various markets and provide resources investors need to make their money work for them. These “robo-advisors” provide investors with the expertise of a seasoned broker, while not relying on one person’s experience or even a human-to-human relationship that many of the people new to the market don’t particularly embrace.

The robo-advisor trend has only popped up in the last couple of years, and for good reason: the technology simply wasn’t available before. The automated investment advice these platforms provide, delivers the investor the most comprehensive and current information to make the best decisions on how to invest, grow, and protect their money.

This benefits investors in several ways, but by using complex mathematical algorithms to find the investments that will work for any single investor’s needs, it allows risk to be marginalized. Investors likely won’t get rich with these platforms, as markets are naturally volatile, but taking much of the high-end risk out of investing, will give investors a certain peace of mind. It has also served to mitigate the unnerving growth in costs that many Wall Street financial advisement services were seeing. If you are a potential investor that has had trouble with a broker in the past, perhaps one of these automated brokers will be right for you.