A smart online investing service for people seeking a better way to manage their savings, Betterment has raised $3 million in its first financing. The funds will be used for the advancement of its internal team and to augment product offerings for 2011 launching. The round was led by Bessemer Ventures, with participation from several prominent individual investors including Dave Abner, Fabrice Grinda and Thomas Lehrman.

“Betterment is in a unique position to shake up the personal finance space with an extremely intuitive interface and superior technology that helps people make smart investment decisions,” said Rob Stavis, a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. “The team is comprised of financial product development and investment management experts who saw a need in the current market place and created a more straightforward investing tool.”

The company is currently handling millions of dollars worth of investment. Betterment has enrolled thousands of users since its official launch at TechCrunch Disrupt last May, and just recently got selected as “Best of Show” presenter at FinovateFall 2010 in October.

“Our passion is making smart investing accessible to customers everywhere — many of whom have been misguided, overwhelmed, or simply underperforming with their investments until now,” said Jon Stein, CEO and Co-Founder of Betterment. “This funding gives us the resources to continue our momentum, growth and innovation by developing our next generation advice, management, and ease-of-use enhancements. It is a great honor to be backed by Bessemer Venture Partners since they have an incredible track record of building industry leaders and successful companies.”

Also, the company today launched a new Treasury bond portfolio branded to be more diversified but less sensitive to interest changes. A shorter duration Treasury bond ETF preserves potential inflation while easing the risk of value loss in a rising interest environment. The offering will be applied to all current and new users’ investment for a more balanced bond portfolio while keeping investments returns higher than the average investment.

As personal finance tools grow in reach and usability, we see a great number of contributions from the cloud sector, repurposing data and delivering it in a timely and effective manner for consumer use.  It’s really empowered individuals in that sense, and the industry is spanning as a result.  Mint, a personal finance and budgeting tool that was acquired by Intuit, has delved deeper into the game with real-time stats, among other features.

“We incorporate the ease-of-use of an online bank with the performance associated with investing – you can think of it as a hybrid,” notes Betterment co-Founder and CEO Jon Stein. “Over the next few months we will continue to launch features aimed at benefiting customers including an IRA option and enhanced advice tools. Our ultimate goals are helping people save and invest smarter and allowing them to easily grow their wealth – our funding and upcoming features will help us to do just that.”