A new kind of advert has been following East Anglian phone screens around this year: investing apps that promise to do the hard part for you.

Not just holding your money, but deciding what to buy and when to sell, powered by artificial intelligence. For anyone who has looked at a savings account rate and sighed, it is a tempting proposition. It also deserves a few minutes of proper thought before any money moves.

What is really being offered

The phrase AI investing covers a wide range. At the calm end are apps that build a simple portfolio based on how much risk you say you can stomach, then quietly rebalance it – genuinely useful, and about as dramatic as a washing machine cycle. Further along are tools that trade actively on your behalf, buying and selling regularly in pursuit of returns. The further from the calm end you go, the higher the costs, the higher the risk, and the more the marketing tends to outrun the evidence.

Worth knowing too: the clever software is often not the regulated part. In most setups the app is unregulated technology sitting on top of a broker that holds your money, and it is the broker’s authorisation that gives you protection. That is a distinction the adverts rarely make.

The three-minute check

Before depositing anything, three quick checks will do more than an hour of reading reviews. Search the firm on the Financial Conduct Authority register and confirm the firm reference number on the site matches the register entry – clone websites copy real numbers with fake contact details. Ask what happens to your money if the company fails, and look for the Financial Services Compensation Scheme protection of up to 85,000 pounds. And find the total annual cost in pounds, not percentages: subscription plus trading costs plus any charge for taking your money out.

On the question of which tools actually deliver, independent testing has finally caught up with the marketing. Reviewers now open real accounts and fund them properly to test AI investing apps UK savers can access, publishing results after all costs rather than repeating the vendor’s own performance charts. The findings are a healthy corrective: a handful of tools do a decent job within limits, many quietly underperform a plain low-cost fund, and the difference between the best and worst is wider than most people would guess.

The same testing outfit, The Investors Centre, funds its reviews with its own deposits rather than accepting payment from the platforms it assesses – which is worth knowing when almost every other “best of” list you meet online is built on commission.

A local word of caution

Trading Standards teams across the region see the same pattern every time a financial fashion takes hold: the genuine products are joined by a crowd of imitations. If an investment opportunity reaches you through a social media message, promises returns that sound certain, or pressures you to act before an offer closes, it is not an opportunity. Legitimate firms have no need to chase anybody, and no regulated investment can guarantee a return.

The unglamorous conclusion

Automated investing is not a gimmick, and for people who never quite get round to investing it can be genuinely helpful – it removes forgetfulness and it removes panic-selling, which between them account for most household investing mistakes. But it is a tool, not a shortcut. Start with money you can afford to leave untouched for years, use a regulated provider you have checked yourself, keep expectations modest, and let the app do the boring bit while you get on with the summer.