Bank robo advisers assist vertical integration

Speaking to ifa, Andrew Ward said that next year the adoption of robo by major institutions was "going to take off".

"It could be just a few years until computers are able to give comprehensive financial advice. But there are obstacles. Offerings like ones from the major banks could end up just pushing people further into the vertically-integrated banking system," he said.

Mr Ward said that because customers are expensive to onboard for most robo offerings, business to business (B2B) would be a hotly contested space.

"B2B is going to make or break robo advisers in 2016. The cloud is becoming ubiquitous and everyone will have great user experience and user interface and great data feeds; the two underlying things that will win the race are the value proposition and the distribution network. This will mean more deals with institutions and even small to medium businesses," he said.