Robo-advice will not plug the gap left by the shortage of human advisers, the managing director of Wealth Wizards has warned.
Pete Connell said his company’s system offers advice which is mainly online, but a human adviser steps in to consider the advice if the system flags that assistance is needed.
He insisted even with robo-advisers there would still be a need for people being involved in advice.
Last year, LV took a majority stake in Wealth Wizards, increasing its capital to allow the development of its white-label algorithm based platform.
Mr Connell said: “We believe the (human) advisers will be hugely important. Their job will be so different because some bits will be done digitally such as the administration.
“Our technology will not put advisers out of business - they just need to focus on what their value is - probably not administration and back offices processes,” he stated.
“It takes three years for an adviser to come to market and there are not enough companies training them, because of the expense and once you have done it they tend to leave and go out on their own.”
As part of the deal with Wealth Wizards, LV’s in-house regulated telephone retirement service Cora uses its advice platform to generate personal advice for pension savers planning for retirement.
Wealth Wizard’s system allows clients to fill out an online form, which generates a report that is checked by an adviser, who contacts the clients to check the recommendation is right.
The company has three chartered financial planners, supported by a team of paraplanners.
Andrew Firth, chief executive of Wealth Wizards, said his company is having “interesting conversations” with “large brands” looking at using their service to provide robo-advice.
He said LV is happy to encourage this to happen, because it means more companies are investing in the platform.
Mr Firth said: “Other financial services, such as protection and mortgages, are on our road map, but at the moment we are focused on planning for retirement, because that’s the biggest challenge and a huge societal issue.”
Last month, LV’s head of policy Phil Brown stated their service was the only one of the 60 claiming to offer robo-advice in the UK that actually offers a personal recommendation.
“It is very difficult to talk about robo-advice in the context of the vast majority of providers not actually giving advice,” he said.
