Following recent game changing products such as its Secondary Market and Portfolio Update, Seedrs continues to lead the way with expansion into automation.

For six years, investments on equity crowdfunding platforms have been entirely on a self-directed basis, with investors hand picking every campaign to invest in individually. With AutoInvest, investors select the amount they would like to invest per-campaign and the product then automatically invests based on criteria they have chosen.

Seedrs’ AutoInvest opens up early-stage private equity to investors who have long been interested in the asset class, but not able to dedicate the time. AutoInvest allows investors to build a diverse portfolio of early-stage businesses more efficiently than ever before. Investors that use AutoInvest won’t miss out on campaigns that suit their investment preferences.

Seedrs’ AutoInvest is the first of its kind in the equity crowdfunding sector and follows recent trends in the robo-investment space. The launch today sees the first iteration of AutoInvest with set criteria, however Seedrs will roll out further customisable features, allowing investors to select from criteria such as S/EIS tax eligibility, sector or stage of business, over the coming weeks.

The launch of AutoInvest follows Seedrs’ £10 million funding round in October 2017 led by Neil Woodford, where the London-based fintech company pledged to use funds raised for advances in AI and automation.

Jeff Kelisky, CEO at Seedrs, says: "Seedrs continues to demonstrate innovation leadership in early-stage and growth investment. After launching our pioneering secondary market, which has gone from strength to strength, last year, we expanded our focus to advances in automation and AI, and now we’re thrilled to be launching another sector first with Seedrs' AutoInvest. This exciting new feature makes building a diversified portfolio of investments in this asset class easier than ever before"

Joel Ippoliti, Chief Product Officer at Seedrs, adds: “Understanding what our customers want is at the core of what we do. There are investors who want it to be quicker and easier to build a diverse early stage investment portfolio, but still want to have oversight and control over their investments. Bringing customisation and transparency to an auto invest tool such as this is a real game changer; there’s nobody else doing anything quite like it.”

Last year Seedrs launched its IRR tool, giving investors 24-hour, year-round online access to their portfolio, enabling them to monitor investments and view their Internal Rate of Return (IRR) on both a tax adjusted and non-tax adjusted basis.

The other benefits for investing on Seedrs will still apply to investors coming through AutoInvest, including the secondary market for liquidity, ordinary voting shares and pre-emption rights meaning investors are protected and have the ability to view and download S/EIS tax certificates for eligible investments.