Robo-adviser Scalable Capital is making a grab at an area that has typically required an human eye, by seeking to integrate tax services into its algorithms.
The firm's founders said building trust or inheritance tax elements into the system would be fairly straightforward to achieve.
Adam French, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, said the only people who really needed to “sit down with their adviser” were those with inheritance tax or tax optimisation issues.
He said: “The really value-added stuff, like trusts and inheritance tax, is really for the 1 per cent – it is for a very small sub-sector of society.
“There is no reason why you cannot automate it. We could do it as well. It is just that we don’t have demand for it.”
Ella Rabener, the company’s chief marketing officer, said it would “not be too difficult” to build tax optimisation into Scalable Capital’s algoritm and would be something the company would consider in the next “two or three years”.
She added the company was hoping to launch a self-invested personal pension product by the end of the second quarter of 2017.
Mr French said there had been demand for a pension product from those who were unhappy with their current product or who wanted all their money in one place.
Phil Perry, a financial adviser with Cheshire-based Ark Financial Planning, said: "Automation doesn't allow you to take account of something the individual might have done yesterday or the day before. You need that personal discussion with someone."
damian.fantato@ft.com
