Santander UK is reportedly planning to launch a new investment platform in 2015 that includes online guidance tools for investors.
Available to the bank’s existing and new customers, the new platform will enable investors to identify suitable funds without going to an adviser.
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The new online filtering tools will determine customers’ risk appetites and allocate them ready-made investment portfolios, reported Financial Times.
The bank is also seeking for an outside partner to launch the new platform.
At present, the bank has only few advisers for customers with more than £50,000 to invest, and also provides wealth management to its most affluent customers.
Additionally, the bank is also planning to deliver online guidance tools called robo-advisers following a consultation paper published by the FCA in July, whose formal outcome is expected early in 2015.
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By GlobalDataMeantime, Barclays is also restructuring its Barclays Stockbrokers investment platform and plans to launch new online guidance tools in the second half of 2015.
Hargreaves Lansdown has also unveiled plans to launch a discretionary direct portfolio service open to smaller investors that include web-based tools to determine customers’ risk appetite.
"Santander does believe the best way to provide this important service to its customers is through a strategic alliance with a third party," the bank said.
Steve Pateman, head of UK banking at Santander, said: "The physical distribution of wealth management products has become less of a service that banks want to offer – it’s highly regulated, it involves very expensive people and we get into trouble when we get it wrong.
"The emergence of people like Nutmeg is transforming the way those services are delivered. They need to partner with a big distributor to get the scale," he added.
