Barclays to launch a digital advice service

Customers will complete a questionnaire on their circumstances and what they want to achieve by when, along with a personality assessment on how they respond to risk. After that, Barclays will use technology to combine this information with their team’s pick of investments, to create a personalised plan that can follow over 10.000 investment paths.

The bank has partnered with Scalable Capital to launch the service, which will give customers access to the bank’s pick of both active and passive funds through a managed portfolio. The service will initially be piloted with Barclays current account customers who have at least USD 6.255 to invest and will be accessed through online banking, with support over the phone. The bank plans to launch the service on the Barclays app later in the summer of 2020.

According to International Adviser, the service is free for customers to create their initial personalised investment plan and they will only be charged once their accounts are set-up and their money has been invested. Once a portfolio is set-up, Barclays will charge an ongoing annual fee of between 1.39% and 1.59%, which is charged based on the value of their investments and split into two types of costs, which are service costs and product costs. The service cost is fixed at 0.95% (+ VAT) and covers planning, investing, and safekeeping costs. The product costs cover ongoing fund management fees and transaction fees and will range between 0.25% and 0.45%, depending on which funds are chosen for a customer’s personalised investment plan.