Shares in UK wealth managers slid sharply on Wednesday amid growing investor concern that new AI-led tools could disrupt traditional financial services models.

St James’s Place, Britain’s largest wealth group, fell more than 13% after US-based fintech Altruist launched a new investment planning tool designed to help financial advisers personalise clients’ strategies. The development spooked markets, raising fears that agentic AI tools capable of sorting tax affairs or providing advice could eat into revenues across the sector.

The sell-off spread quickly across UK-listed firms, with AJ Bell down 8%, while Quilter and Aberdeen Group both lost more than 5% (thought it’s worth noting that – at time of writing – Aberdeen Group has since recovered).

Price comparison companies were also caught up in the sell-off. Mony Group, owner of MoneySuperMarket, fell nearly 2% on Wednesday after closing 12% on Tuesday, pushing its shares to their lowest level in 13 years. They’ve since rebounded by around 1.5% at time of writing. Future, which owns Go.Compare, was down nearly 4% following a 3.6% drop the previous day. Much like Mony Group though, they’ve seen some modest gains this morning.

Technology and financial stocks were also among the worst performers across Europe, with the financials sub-index of the Stoxx Europe 600 down 2% (though this has recovered to -1.72% at time of writing).

Swiss wealth manager Julius Baer fell 3%, while UBS – Europe’s largest wealth management business – declined 2.8%.

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The move echoes recent pressure on software, data and analytics stocks, which fell sharply last week following concerns about disruption from Anthropic’s new coding plug-in tools. Shares in some of those companies continued to slide on Wednesday, with FTSE 100 business data provider Relx among the fallers, down by almost 6%.

Los Angeles-based Altruist said on Tuesday that its new planning tool could help create personalised tax strategies “within minutes” by analysing tax returns, payslips and meeting notes. It can also explore “what-if” scenarios, including property sales or retirement transitions.

The announcement has pushed the previously little-known company into the spotlight. Altruist was valued at $1.9bn last April in a funding round led by GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, with Salesforce Ventures, Geodesic Capital and Baillie Gifford also participating.