Wealth Wizards is looking to upgrade its “robo-paraplanner” to include new products and artificial intelligence next year.
The company, which is majority owned by LV, said this would allow it to learn how each advice firm operates and improve its recommendations.
The robo-paraplanner, which advisers can white label, was launched earlier this year and currently only provides at-retirement advice.
Peet Denny, Wealth Wizards’ chief technology officer, said the firms which have been using it have seen dramatic improvements.
He said: “What we are hearing from the companies who have got it is they are experiencing a 10-times boost in productivity.
“What we have got is a bit like a paraplanner but it is completely automated. It does the things which are normally routine and which need a lot of care and require a lot of rigour.
“It frees up the human to do what they do best, which is the personal connection with their clients.”
He said Wealth Wizards’ AI system would produce a recommendation which the advice could then implement or edit.
It would then take account of any changes the adviser made and improve its recommendations based on an advice firm’s house view.
Some of these changes would also be fed into the wider network of the system so all advisers would benefit from this machine learning.
But Mr Denny acknowledged there was an element of commercial sensitivity around this and advisers could opt out of some aspects of it.
The robo-paraplanner was launched earlier this year and off the back of this Mr Denny said Wealth Wizards decided to invest "a lot more" into artificial intelligence over the course of this year.
To do so it has assembled a team made up of people from Silicon Valley giants like Facebook and institutions such as Oxford University.
He said Wealth Wizards is contemplating a move into other products such as mortgages and investments but no decision had yet been made.
Mr Denny said: “One of our niches is pensions and at-retirement but where we want to be in 2019 and 2020 is to have a more holistic service so we are going to move to the left and the right into different products.”
He said many of the firms which currently use its robo-paraplanner do so for lower value clients because it allows them to service them at a much lower cost while keeping the higher value clients in a more traditional advice process.
Wealth Wizard revealed their plans to FTAdviser after Aviva followed LV's lead by also taking a stake in a robo-adviser.
Aviva bought a majority shareholding in robo-adviser Wealthify for an undisclosed amount earlier this month.
Wealthify will be available to Aviva’s customers through MyAviva, where it will be available alongside the providers other products and services.
Investment from Aviva will also support Wealthify’s business development, helping to accelerate its growth plans.
Blair Turnbull, managing director of Aviva UK Digital, said the deal is part of Aviva’s strategy to build customer loyalty by providing customers with a wide range of insurance and investment services through MyAviva.
damian.fantato@ft.com
