The UK’s robo-advisor brand – once one of the most prominent and now owned by JP Morgan – is to disappear as its US parent builds out its retail wealth management offering in the country.

The UK’s Nutmeg brand, launched in 2012 as one of the most recognisable “robo-advisor” models of its time, is no more. Yesterday, JP Morgan – which acquired the firm in 2021 – announced that it was rebranding its consumer wealth offering.

The new entity will be called JP Morgan Personal Investing, a retail wealth management and investment business. It will be available both as a standalone service and via the Chase UK app, the US-listed banking group said in a statement. The Nutmeg name will disappear in November.

In addition to managed investments, pensions and individual savings accounts, the business will provide “a range of new products and services,” including digital financial planning tools and dedicated relationship managers, the bank said.

The move underscores how large US banks, such as Goldman Sachs, have sought to enter the UK’s retail and mass-affluent wealth space. Goldman Sachs, for example, offers its Marcus online savings and lending service. JP Morgan appears to be positioning itself against the likes of Hargreaves Lansdown, now owned by CVC Capital Partners, Nordic Capital, and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA).

“Consumers in the UK are world-leading in adopting digital financial services, and today is an important next step in the evolution of our offering in the UK market, leveraging JP Morgan expertise and heritage to provide consumers with exceptional investment products and services,” Mark O'Donovan, CEO of international consumer banking at JP Morgan Chase, said. “JP Morgan Personal Investing will give retail customers in the UK the ability to bank with Chase and invest with JP Morgan.”

Robo-advisors and the UK experience
Attempts to build stand-alone robo-advisory brands in the UK have been mixed. UBS, for example, closed its SmartWealth digital wealth platform in 2018 and sold the technology to US firm SigFig, a year after launching it. 

Commenting on Nutmeg’s shift, Holly Mackay, CEO and founder of Boring Money, said: “It was inevitable that JP Morgan would move Nutmeg under the parent brand eventually. Wall Street just doesn’t do brands like Nutmeg. I think today’s news represents the end of robo-advisors as a stand-alone category in the UK. The new challengers are not startups with quirky brands but established players with big ambitions. Tomorrow’s platforms will combine DIY investment functionality with AI support, aligned with targeted regulatory changes.”

As at the fourth quarter of 2015, Nutmeg had £150 million of assets under administration and 6,250 clients. Today, assets stand at more than £8.5 billion, with over 265,000 clients, putting it among the UK’s top 10 digital wealth providers by assets.

Competitive pressures
The rebrand also means that JP Morgan is competing, to some extent, with incumbent UK high street banks, including Lloyds Banking Group – through its Schroders Personal Wealth joint venture – as well as NatWest, HSBC and Barclays. The development highlights that despite frictions in transatlantic trade, US banks continue to see the UK as a valuable retail and wealth management market.

JP Morgan Personal Investing will incorporate all existing Nutmeg products and services, with additional features to follow. These will include “Wealth Planner,” a tool providing clients with a consolidated view of their wealth and tailored suggestions to meet financial goals. From November, clients with more than £250,000 ($336,778) invested will have access to a dedicated relationship manager.

In 2026, JP Morgan will launch a full DIY investment platform, allowing investors to buy and sell shares, bonds, funds and other asset classes.

JP Morgan said it is “taking everything that is already strong about Nutmeg and expanding it with the products and services that JP Morgan customers have come to expect in the US.”

Nutmeg employs 30 wealth advisors, paraplanners and financial planners.

Reflecting on whether the “robo-advisor” model has reached its limits, JP Morgan said: “While Nutmeg was founded to disrupt the wealth management industry with a digital-focused offering, since 2020 we have also offered clients access to a team of financial planners and advisors providing restricted financial advice and free financial guidance. We believe combining human expertise with an award-winning digital experience will help more people to achieve their financial goals.”

The bank added that it recognises some clients want greater DIY control over their money: “With the investment we are making in JP Morgan Personal Investing, and under the ownership of one of the world’s largest investment firms, we have the opportunity to offer clients a full DIY platform alongside the managed portfolios we already provide.”

(Editor's note: The comments from the bank about the robo-advisor model are interesting, particularly at a time when everyone appears to be excited – or possibly alarmed – about AI. It makes it clear that human contact and advice is important and that a pure stand-alone AI platform does not really work for wealth management, at least for the forseeable future. Many people who invest, save and borrow, require at certain points of their financial lives the chance to sit down with someone and discuss what they want to do. Discussing this with a chatbot, or whatever, isn't enough. In fact, it is likely to cause intense frustration. Given the difficulties many people have in their daily lives in handling utility bills online – to give one example – it seems a stretch to imagine that this approach will work consistently when wealth is involved. The Nutmeg business had a vigorous marketing campaign; as a brand, it was certainly powerful, but never quite gathered the momentum hoped for. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out and how the competition reacts.)