Robo-advice is attracting greater interest from investors while advisers have moved away from seeing it as a threat and now regard it as a tool to assist in the provision of advice, according to a new report.
The Investment Trends inaugural Robo-advice Report, which assessed the adoption of robo-advice services among nearly 9,000 online share investors and 1,450 financial advisers in five countries earlier this year found the majority of advisers (83%) did not believe robo-advice was a threat to the financial planning industry and/or had a place in the planning practice.
Investment Trends, Research Director Recep Peker said advisers were seeing robo-advice as more than automated portfolio recommendation and rebalancing tools and were considering it for use across the entire advice delivery spectrum.
According to the report, advisers stated that automated advice tools could benefit their business by helping them to focus on providing strategic advice (53% cite this), servicing more clients (43%) and lowering the cost of advice (41%).
This shift in adviser sentiment was also reflected in the growing awareness of robo-advice among investors with the Report stating 27% of the Australian online investor population hadalready heard of robo-advice, up from 19% six months ago.
“Many investors are taking notice of robo-advice, and have an interest in learning more about this potential digital disruptor in the financial services industry,” Peker said.
“Robo-advice will take centre stage as more solutions become available, and as investors themselves begin to engage with these non-traditional advice models.”
