Former Barclays wealth manager launches mass-market investment service

AN ONLINE investment management service has been launched aimed at bringing private banking-style services to the masses.

Nutmeg has been set up by Nick Hungerford, a former director at stockbroker Brewin Dolphin and wealth manager at Barclays, and is backed by Scottish venture capital group Pentech and Tim Draper who was an early investor in both Skype and Hotmail.

The company will build and manage investment portfolios with a minimum starting point of just £1,000.

Customers set their risk level and timeframe with charges capped at 1 per cent a year – but that could fall to 0.3 per cent for long-term investors.

Draper said he believed Nutmeg would bring “democracy and transparency to a sector which is ripe for reform”.

“Most of the interesting businesses I invest in originate on the west coast of the US, so it’s wonderful to be part of such an exciting British business which has the potential to be as big as anything in America.”

Hungerford said a spell studying at Stanford Business School, surrounded by people who worked at companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter, convinced him that the internet could help bring investment management services to a much wider group of customers.

London-based Nutmeg recently announced that it had raised £3.4 million in its second round of venture capital funding led by Pentech.

Other investors in the company include Klaus Hommels, a board member of Swedish music streaming group Spotify.