TL;DR

UK wealth managers suffered their steepest one-day falls in years after US fintech Altruist launched an AI-powered financial planning tool. St James’s Place dropped over 13%, with the sell-off spreading to European firms including Julius Baer and UBS, marking wealth management as the latest sector caught in what investors are calling AI contagion.

A market-wide reaction

The sell-off was triggered by Los Angeles-based Altruist announcing that its AI planning tool could create personalised tax strategies “within minutes” by analysing tax returns, payslips, and meeting notes. Altruist founder Jason Wenk said the tool “expands what a single adviser can handle, raises the bar on outcomes and makes average advice a lot harder to justify.”

AJ Bell fell 8%, Quilter and Aberdeen Group both lost more than 5%, and data provider Relx dropped over 6%. In Europe, Julius Baer fell 3%, UBS 2.8%, and Amundi 2%. Technology and financial stocks were the worst performers across European markets, with the Stoxx Europe 600 financials sub-index down 2%.

Barclays head of European equities strategy Emmanuel Cau described a “sell first, see later” attitude, with perceived losers being “indiscriminately” sold. He noted: “The pace of AI innovation is so fast that basically every week there’s a new tool being launched — the market is looking for the next AI loser.”

Pushback from incumbents

St James’s Place chair Paul Manduca called the declines “surprising and almost certainly an overreaction,” arguing that face-to-face advice remains in high demand. Panmure Liberum analyst Rae Maile questioned whether wealthy individuals with complex needs would “trust all of that to a computer to solve.”

The sell-off echoes similar pressure on software and legal stocks the previous week, when Anthropic’s new coding plug-in tools hit the sector.

Looking forward

The speed at which AI fears are jumping between sectors suggests markets are repricing entire industries on the basis of individual product launches. Whether this reflects genuine disruption risk or speculative over-reaction will become clearer as these AI tools face real-world adoption.