Lloyds has set out plans to launch an investment app for investors by the end of 2020 combining execution-only services and robo advice for customers with less than £100k to invest.
It provides a home for customers who do not have the £100,000 or more to invest that is required to be channeled into Schroders Personal Wealth. Lloyds have tagged those clients as mass affluent, while high net worth clients, with more than £1m to invest, will be introduced to Cazenove.
Scottish Widows chief executive and Lloyds Banking Group director of insurance and wealth Antonio Lorenzo (pictured) said Lloyds is creating a “market leading wealth management proposition” to meet both simple and more complex customer needs.
“We will do this through three lines of business. Firstly, a group branded mass market offering that we will launch at the end of 2020. Secondly, our Schroders Personal Wealth joint-venture, and thirdly, through providing access to a leading wealth management and investment business, Cazenove Capital, for our high and ultra-high net worth customers.”
Following Natwest, Santander and HSBC
Altus director Simon Bussy said Lloyds joins a growing list of providers already offering robo services in the UK. “With many millions of customers and a high street brand, a proposition underpinned with the right breadth of vision and ambition could do well,” Bussy said. “But they have to get the proposition – and the value proposition – right.”
Natwest became the first UK bank in 2017 to launch an investment robo adviser, followed by Santander in October 2018 and HSBC in November 2018.
Bussy added: “With the aim to launch by end 2020, Lloyds is giving itself sufficient time to develop an exciting proposition and leapfrog many of its high street competitors; a compelling customer centric proposition that pushes the boundaries rather than yet another ‘me too’… because ‘me too’, even with a big brand behind it, doesn’t work.”
The robo adviser will be integrated into existing online and mobile banking for Lloyds Bank, Halifax and Bank of Scotland customers.
A spokesperson for Lloyds said it is already enabling banking customers to view their Scottish Widows pensions in their banking app.
