Your phone might be smart. But is it smart enough to replace your financial adviser?

As consumers ditch checkbooks and spreadsheets for services that let them pay bills and monitor their net worth online, a growing number of companies are betting they will choose to receive financial advice not only on their computers but also, increasingly, on their mobile devices.

Finovate, a conference series that showcases new financial applications, expects nearly 200 companies to present at its events this year -- nearly 10 times as many as in 2007. The company, which holds confabs in New York, San Francisco and Europe, will host its first-ever event in Asia in November.

The new web and mobile apps all pull data from the "cloud," that grand repository of storage in the sky. Taken together, the apps hold the potential to disrupt the personal-finance industry by offering new ways to help consumers stick to budgets, stay on top of their portfolios and reduce investment-management fees.

At the same time, critics warn, the apps also could pose security or privacy risks, and, by helping people automate their personal-finance decisions, could foster complacency.

Nonetheless, venture capitalists are betting big. In the first quarter, they gave $150 million in venture-capital funding to companies that have presented at Finovate, more than twice as much as they gave in the first quarter last year.

Their goal: to fund the next Mint.com, which launched five years ago and now boasts more than 9 million users. Its free service, which allows users to aggregate bank and investment information in one place through its website and mobile app (on iPhone and Android) and provides advice on ways to save, took direct aim at desktop personal-finance software such as Intuit (INTU)'s Quicken and Microsoft Money. In 2009, Intuit bought Mint for $170 million. Microsoft (MSFT) discontinued Money that same year.

The newer services aim to replace traditional financial advisers, or to expand on Mint and similar offerings by tapping into the latest research in behavioral finance to ensure you stick to your spending plans.

For example, HelloWallet (apps for iPhone and Android), which debuted last year and now has 350,000 participants, compares a user's spending and savings habits to those of people of similar ages and income levels. The company claims its average participant has increased his or her monthly contribution to savings by 80%.

The services don't always work as smoothly as advertised. Ginger Dean, 30 years old, of Washington, says many of the 10 personal-finance services she has used have experienced occasional glitches that prevent her from immediately updating her account information. When it comes to bill payments, she says, "I feel a lot safer with my bank."

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The Best New Personal Finance Apps