Investec shuttered its Click & Invest robo-advisory service, recording a £12.8 million operating loss on the business after attracting fewer investors than expected.

During its annual results presentation, the Anglo-South African investment bank reported a second successive year of losses, having already reported a £13.5 million fall in profits in the year ending March 2018. Around £6 million worth of capitalised software was written-off in the current year, bringing total losses to about £32 million.

"Investec Click & Invest launched just under two years ago, and we are extremely proud of the service we have provided and the consistently positive feedback we have received from clients,” read a statement.

"However, the reality has been that the appetite for investment services such as ours remains low and the market itself is growing at a much slower rate than expected."

Investec said it intends to use the proprietary technology developed by Click & Invest in other parts of the group, although what will happen to the businesses’ 54 staff is less certain and currently under review.

The firm's withdrawal from the robo-advisory market follows UBS closing its SmartWealth service last August, and more recently, ABN Amro's decision in April to shut down its German online wealth management business, Prospery, after failing to attract sufficient clients.

Last year, GlobalData analysis suggested that the much-hyped robo-advisory market still had a lot to offer, despite its 2018 wealth manager survey finding that just 10 per cent of private wealth managers feared they would lose market share to robo-advisors over the next 12 months, with clients entrusting only small portfolios to the digital-only platforms.

In the US, following in the footsteps of WorthFM, SheCapital and Owners Advisory, New York-based robo-advisor Hedgeable went out of business on 9 August 2018, just short of its 10-year anniversary.

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