While such a move could potentially save taxpayers billions of pounds, the report will not be welcomed by civil servants who face getting the chop over the next 13 years or so.

The march of the robots continues at a relentless pace. The prospect of robotic civil servants, policing via drones and robo surgeons — things usually associated with an Arthur C Clarke novel — is now a distinct reality. But humans have always been uneasy about the advance of robots. From 2001 A Space Odyssey to the Terminator franchise, the uneasy alliance between man and machine has long been a mainstay of science fiction writers and directors.

This clash has also played out in the financial services industry (albeit in less dramatic fashion) through tech disruption. Various robo advice models, armed with algorithms and advanced software, have made a significant assault on the industry over recent years due to their ability to appeal to younger, mass market and more autonomously-minded investors with cost effective offerings. The threat posed by the robots was laid bare by CoreData’s Adviser Business Strategy 2016 report which revealed nearly three in ten advisers thought the ability to fend off competition from robo-advisers and online execution-only platforms would afford them a key competitive advantage.

But news that Betterment in the US and Barclays in the UK are to launch “hybrid” offerings combining robo-advice with a human touch suggest the power of the robots could be waning and that predictions of the robo revolution may have been premature.

Betterment, a New York-based pioneer of robo advice, is launching a new offering enabling customers to receive financial advice from human advisers alongside its digital services. One hybrid tier will allow customers to have an annual call with Betterment’s in-house certified financial planners while another more expensive tier will offer unlimited access to the team of advisers.

Barclays, meanwhile, is reportedly looking to launch a hybrid financial planning proposition that would include an online and face-to-face offering.

The new propositions come on the back of the launch of LEBC Group’s “bionic advisory service” that combines human and automated services.

The emergence of these hybrid offerings marks the latest evolution of the robo-advice model as it begins to encroach into the territory usually occupied by wealth management firms. In one sense, it underscores the fact that digital-only offerings have limitations that cannot be easily overcome by the latest technologies. And such limitations become more apparent when giants of the robo world such as Betterment reach a certain scale. Betterment has likely reached the conclusion that it cannot embark on the next phase of its growth story and make further inroads into the market by relying on a limited customer base (predominantly mass market investors) paying low fees. This is simple economics at work.

The launch of these new hybrid propositions comes at a time when the robo-advice market is showing signs of saturation amid an escalating price war. Nutmeg recently announced it is cutting its fees and launching a new range of low-cost products in a bid to attract new clients and fend off lower cost rivals.

Meanwhile, it has been reported that some banks that were planning to launch robo-advice offerings are now pausing for thought amid question marks over the profitability of the robo model. It was reported last year that a number of banks including Lloyds, RBS and Santander were looking to develop online investment propositions.

Such heightened competition and pricing pressures in the traditional robo advice market can also be evidenced by the flurry of new specialist offerings that have recently come to market. Robo-adviser Munnypot, which launched at the end of 2016, is a WhatsApp style chat-based platform designed to help customers manage savings digitally. Finimize, a start-up looking to make financial advice more accessible to young people, has a free robo-advice platform for millennials.

And in the US, robo advice offerings such as ElleVest and WorthFM have emerged that cater to the female market. Ellevest says on its website that “investing shouldn’t be unisex” and claims to be “redefining investing for women.” It factors women’s risk preferences, longer lifespans and the gender pay gap into its plans.

While the rise of the hybrid model suggests traditional robo advice offerings are struggling to gain further market traction, other forces are at work that are serving to halt the march of the machines. Chief among which are regulatory concerns and fears that robo advice could trigger the next mis-selling scandal. The question about how robo advice tools should be treated for regulatory purposes remains a grey area. And lack of clarity over the difference between guidance and advice means some robo propositions are reluctant to offer guidance owing to concerns they could unwittingly stray into the regulated advice arena.

Meanwhile, Bank of England governor Mark Carney issued a warning to regulators and policymakers in January that robo advice models and other fintech propositions that herd large numbers of investors toward certain assets could pose a systemic risk.

The rise of hybrid robo offerings can be interpreted in two ways. On the one hand, it could signal that humans and robots are finding it easier to work alongside each other in a marriage that fuses computer algorithms with soft human skills.

But on the other hand, these new developments perhaps underscore the fact that technology in its present form has its limitations. In just the same way as we are not yet at a stage when everyone can drive around in driverless cars and pay for every transaction or service with a fingerprint, we are not yet at a stage when we can completely trust robots to look after people’s money according to their unique circumstances. And we are not yet at a stage when robo-advice can harness the powers of artificial intelligence to perform tasks such as responding to client questions or providing behavioural-based insights. So perhaps the pendulum is swinging back toward the human side of the man versus machine debate as we realize that artificial intelligence is still in its infancy.  And many people will see that as a good thing. займ онлайн взять займ с просрочкой на картусамый выгодный онлайн займбез процентов займ