Many venture capitalists and entrepreneurs are betting that in the continuing transformation of finance by technology, the financial assistant category will be one of the most lucrative.

Image The Albert app provides a personalized savings account and can look at car insurance policies and credit cards to find better deals. Banks are racing to catch up with such digital advances.

“There is lots of opportunity here,” said Charles Birnbaum, an investor at the venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners, who recently put money into Albert. “This is an opportunity that Mint and the banks should have done for people already — made it really easy to have a good sense for what you should be doing with your money.”

The new personal financial advisers are taking a different tack compared with big-name financial technology start-ups like Lending Club and Square, which provide actual financial services: arranging loans and processing payments. Credit Karma and its competitors are betting that there is more value in being the neutral intermediary that helps customers find financial services and keep track of their various accounts.

Advocates of this business model compare the opportunity to the one that Google and Facebook spotted in media, where they serve as so-called platforms for other media companies rather than being media companies themselves. This approach allowed them to become the primary point of contact with the customer, a very profitable and powerful place to sit.

“By being Switzerland, and being neutral, in the same way that Google and Facebook are, we are finding the best products,” said Nikhyl Singhal, a former Google executive who joined Credit Karma as the chief product officer last year. “We don’t have the conflict where we are trying to sell our own product.”

Credit Karma in particular has been demonstrating how lucrative this can be by charging lenders and credit card companies for every customer it passes along. While the company does not say how much it charges, industry insiders say that Credit Karma generally makes $100 to $700 for every customer who signs up for a credit card, a significant chunk of the revenue that the credit card company will make in the first year. Credit Karma said it pulled in around $350 million of revenue last year.

The business model creates the potential for conflicts of interest if an intermediary like Credit Karma sends customers to a credit card company or lender that pays the biggest referral fee rather than the one that offers the best deal for the customer. But the companies are all adamant that they will succeed only if they are known for doing what is best for the customer.