Barclays has launched a new digital service for clients with a minimum of £5,000 to invest, which it claims will tackle the UK’s advice gap and give more people the confidence and support their savings.

The banking giant has partnered with Scalable Capital for the new discretionary portfolio management service.

It is called Barclays Plan & Invest.

Barclays plans to adapt the investment plans to any changes in the market or the customer’s circumstances and will “check-in” with them once a year to help with this.

The methodology is like that used by most robo-advisers. Customers will complete a questionnaire on their circumstances and goals, along with a personality assessment on how they respond to risk. Barclays will then use technology to create a personalised plan that can follow over 10,000 investment paths.

The service will be piloted with Barclays current account customers who have at least £5,000 to invest and will be accessed through Online Banking. The bank plans to launch the service on the Barclays app later this summer.

The service will be free to create an initial plan. Once a portfolio is set-up, Barclays will charge an ongoing annual fee of between 1.39% and 1.59% based on the value of the investments and split into service and product costs. The service cost is fixed at 0.95% (plus VAT).

Dirk Klee, CEO of wealth management and investments at Barclays, said: “Over the last few months, we’ve seen a rise in the number of people wanting to invest for the first time and it feels more important than ever that we give people the right tools and advice to plan for their financial future.

“We launched Plan & Invest after listening to our customers, who said they wanted an investment service that gave them the convenience and affordability of robo-advice, but with more of the personalisation of Wealth Management.”

 “I firmly believe that everyone should have access to affordable advice and Plan & Invest is just the first step in our plans to open up the tools we use with our Wealth clients to more people.”