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Shares in the UK’s largest wealth managers tumbled on Wednesday over concerns about potential disruption from a new AI-led investment tool.
St James’s Place, Britain’s biggest wealth group, fell as much as 13 per cent, after US-based wealth management platform Altruist launched a tool to help financial advisers personalise clients’ investment strategies.
The development has spooked investors, sparking fears about how the technology might undermine the traditional industry. In the US, Raymond James fell 8.7 per cent on Tuesday and Charles Schwab fell 7.4 per cent.
As the fears spread to the UK on Wednesday, AJ Bell fell 7 per cent, Quilter was down more than 5 per cent and Aberdeen Group declined by 4 per cent.
The sell-off follows a similar move in software, data and analytics stocks last week, when fears about disruption from Anthropic’s new coding plug-in tools sent the sector sharply lower.
Los Angeles-based Altruist said on Tuesday its new planning tool could help create personalised tax strategies “within minutes” by analysing tax returns, payslips and meeting notes. It could also explore “what-if” scenarios including property sales or retirement transitions.
“It expands what a single adviser can handle, raises the bar on outcomes and makes average advice a lot harder to justify,” Altruist’s founder and chief executive Jason Wenk said of the company’s Hazel platform.
Emmanuel Cau, head of European equities strategy at Barclays, said: “The pace of AI innovation is so fast that basically every week there’s a new tool being launched — the market is looking for the next AI loser.”
The size of the move suggests a “sell first, see later” attitude from investors, Cau added.
This is a developing story