Standard Life Aberdeen's advice arm is among the businesses taking part in the latest cohort of the Financial Conduct Authority's regulatory sandbox.
1825, which was launched by Standard Life in 2015, is taking part in the sandbox to test an automated advice service for those who are close to retirement.
An automated engine will generate a plan that considers how to meet the needs and aspirations of consumers, using their available liquid and illiquid assets.
The regulatory sandbox allows firms to test innovative products, services or business models in a live market environment, while ensuring appropriate protections are in place.
Christopher Woolard, executive director of strategy and competition at the FCA, said: "I am pleased to say that this is the largest sandbox cohort to date with a record number of applicants meeting our eligibility criteria.
"Cohort four has seen a large increase in the number of firms testing wholesale propositions including firms that are aiming to increase the efficiency of the capital-raising process. Alongside these we can see significant use of distributed ledger technology, some experimentation with crypto-assets which will help inform our policy work and propositions aimed at helping lower income consumers."
The FCA has accepted 29 firm into the sandbox in the latest cohort, with Dashly joining 1825 among them.
Dashly is testing a fully autonomous "always-on" mortgage advice platform that continuously tracks and compares a borrower’s existing mortgage, alerting them the moment it pays to switch.
Ross Boyd, founder of Dashly, said: "Being accepted into the FCA Sandbox is a huge fillip for everyone at Team Dashly.
"We believe that what we are bringing to the market is something entirely different to the first generation of ‘robo-brokers’ and will be working with the FCA closely as we seek to solve the fundamental problem of consumer inertia.
"As an ‘always-on’ mortgage platform, Dashly tests every mortgage against your unique circumstances every day, irrespective of whether you have been on your current deal for two weeks or two years. Our goal is to officially launch at the end of the summer."
The only other advice service in the latest cohort was from Mortgage Kart, which is trialling an automated advice offering to help customers pick the most suitable mortgage given their needs and circumstances.
Apart from Standard Life, the only other large company in the latest cohort was NatWest, which is trialling a governance model based on distributed ledger technology that allows organisations to work collaboratively on developing and running decentralised applications.
Also among the 29 companies is Zippen, which hopes to allow people to transfer and consolidate their pensions in one place, Mettle, a current account which helps small business owners make decisions, and Fineqia, a blockchain based digital platform.
The FCA has also announced that the application window for the fifth cohort of the regulatory sandbox will open later this year.
damian.fantato@ft.com
