Chatbot vs robo advice
I’ve captured this here because it turns out it’s a hard question to find the answer to.
Chatbots are any kind of interactive system that conducts a conversation via text or audio. They are often designed to simulate how a human would behave.
Robo advisors in the UK are a special kind of chatbot that offer limited forms of regulated financial advice. From the FCA advice unit:
“Consumers who engage with authorised firms providing automated advice models will continue to have the same access to the Financial Ombudsman Service and to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme as they would do under more traditional advice models.”
This is hard to find because the FCA review of financial advice (2015, updated April 2017) revealed that vendors didn’t like the term “robo advice” so FCA doesn’t use the term any more.
