InvestmentsDec 17 2019

Robo-adviser seeks £30m to expand advice arm

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Robo-adviser seeks £30m to expand advice arm

Wealth Wizards, a robo-advice company backed by LV, is seeking to raise a reported £30m to expand its financial advice operations.

The company also has operations in insurance and banking. The £30m would be the largest fund raising round it has undertaken to date.

Wealth Wizards has confirmed it is seeking new funding but has not confirmed the amount, with the £30m figure reported by Sky News.

The company offers an automated product to financial advisers which allows them to automate some of the advice process. This is operated as a white label service, with the adviser's own branding attached to the products provided by Wealth Wizards.

The company also offers its own robo-advice to end clients, through a product called MyEva which was launched earlier this year and uses artificial intelligence. 

In a statement Wealth Wizards said: "The new funding round will accelerate the adoption of Wealth Wizards’ software-as-a-service platform and AI capabilities to drive expansion within the financial advice, banking, insurance and employee benefits markets, and the development of further market changing products for the wider digital financial services market."

LV invested in the Leamington Spa-based company in 2015.

Robo-advisers have raised lots of cash in recent years, often from larger more established financial services companies, but in many cases have struggled to convert this into profitability.

Nutmeg is backed by Schroders and Goldman Sachs but lost £18.6m in 2018 while Moneyfarm is backed by Allianz and lost £12.5m in 2018. Meanwhile BlackRock has invested in Scalable Capital, which lost £540,000 in 2018.

david.thorpe@ft.com

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