UK wealth manager and price comparison site shares fall amid AI fears

Wealth managers and price comparison sites have become the latest companies to be hit by fears that their businesses will be disrupted by new artificial intelligence innovations.Shares in UK wealth management firms tumbled on Wednesday morning, after the AI company Altruist Corp launched a service that it said helps advisers create personalised tax strategies by reading clients’ pay stubs, account statements and other documents.The UK wealth manager St James’s Place fell almost 10% in early trading, with rival Quilter down 5.2% and AJ Bell losing 5.7%, as investors anticipated that agentic tools that can sort tax affairs, or provide advice, could eat into their revenues.“Fresh casualties from AI advances are falling on the investment landscape,” warned Susannah Streeter, the chief investment strategist at Wealth Club.“The big reveal from tech startup Altruist Corp, which is led by former Wall Street professionals, is a new tool helping financial advisers personalise tax strategies for clients and deal with all the admin. The worry is that this is just the tip of the iceberg and fresh efficiencies will be unleashed by AI to disrupt the financial advice and investment industry and reduce the fees which can be charged. As the AI cards are shuffled, the pile of potential losers is mounting up, and speculation about which sector will be hit next is rife,” Streeter added.Shares in two of the UK’s largest price comparison sites continued to slide on Wednesday, adding to losses in the previous session. The owner of Moneysupermarket, Mony Group, fell 2% in early trading on Wednesday, after they closed 12% down on Tuesday, after a sell-off pushed its shares to their lowest level in 13 years.The Go.Compare owner, Future, was trading 2.7% lower on Wednesday morning, after the previous day’s 3.6% fall.Investors have become nervous about the prospect of disruption from AI and other new technologies, after the US company Insurify launched a new service allowing users to compare car insurance quotes directly using OpenAI’s ChatGPT.In addition, the Spain-based digital insurer Tuio is to provide home insurance quotes directly to ChatGPT users, and other companies are expected to follow suit, adding to fears that consumers seeking car, home and travel insurance could turn to chatbots to gather and compare quotes.Mony Group owns brands including Moneysupermarket and TravelSupermarket, as well as the cashback website Quidco and MoneySavingExpert, the personal finance help site started by Martin Lewis.Future is one of the most shorted UK stocks, as investors have placed bets that its value will fall further.Insurify’s founder and chief executive, Snejina Zacharia, said the company was “redefining the insurance shopping experience by making it feel as simple as having a conversation”.She added: “Drivers can ask questions in plain language, explore personalised quotes, and review real customer feedback, all in one place.”Insurance and wealth management are the latest sectors to suffer big share price drops this year as a result of fears about the impact of AI, after falls in publishing and legal software companies and advertising firms.“Getting an insurance quote through ChatGPT makes perfect sense as many people are now using chatbots to obtain information on products and services”, said Dan Coatsworth, the head of markets at the broker AJ Bell.“The share price slump in the owners of Moneysupermarket and Go.Compare suggests … comparison portals will have to quickly find a way to get in on the game, such as embedding their services into ChatGPT and potentially offering bigger incentives to prospective customers as well as getting their brand to appear prominently in search results.”Recent declines in software companies came after the US artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, the company behind the chatbot Claude, revealed a tool for use by companies’ legal departments.Anthropic said the tool could automate legal work such as contract reviewing, non-disclosure agreement triage, compliance workflows, legal briefings and templated responses.The news hit shares in the UK publishing group Pearson, the information and analytics company Relx, as well as the software company Sage.