Yes. Using software to trade your own account is legal in the United Kingdom, and has been for as long as retail brokers have offered APIs. What the Financial Conduct Authority regulates is not the software. It is three things around it: giving investment advice, managing money on someone else's behalf, and how any of it is advertised.
Almost every question about whether an AI trading tool is allowed comes down to which side of these it sits on.
Legal, unregulated as an activity, and entirely your responsibility. You can place orders by hand, by spreadsheet, or by software. Your broker is the regulated party in that relationship, not your tooling.
A regulated activity under the Financial Services and Markets Act. A firm telling you which specific investments to buy, presented as suitable for you personally, needs FCA authorisation.
Discretionary investment management is also regulated, and is a much heavier permission. Holding client money adds more requirements again.
Financial promotions are regulated separately under section 21. Guaranteed returns, past performance framed as a prediction, and undisclosed paid endorsements are all breaches, whoever publishes them.
blank is a tool you run, on your own machine, against your own broker account. It is not FCA-authorised, does not give investment advice, does not manage money on your behalf, and never holds your funds. Your money stays in your own Trading 212 account throughout, and blank reaches it through an API key you create and can revoke in seconds.
That is a deliberate design choice, not a loophole. It is why the app runs locally rather than in a cloud that would place decisions further from you, why every trade carries a written justification you can read, and why nothing on this site claims a return.
The honest consequence is that the responsibility is yours. blank is not a regulated adviser and cannot be treated as one. If you want a firm that is accountable to the FCA for the suitability of your investments, you want an authorised adviser or a discretionary manager, and blank is not a substitute for that.
Nothing about automation changes your tax position. Gains from trading a General Invest account are taxable in the normal way and remain your responsibility to report. A Stocks and Shares ISA remains tax-free within its own rules. blank does not file anything for you and does not give tax advice.
Your broker's terms still apply too. Trading 212 publishes an API and documents the permissions each key carries, which is what makes an integration like this possible in the first place. Grant the narrowest permissions the tool needs, and revoke the key if you ever want to cut it off.
The FCA has been explicit that it does not intend to write a separate rulebook for artificial intelligence. Its position is that existing rules, including the Consumer Duty and the senior managers regime, already apply to firms deploying AI. It has also warned repeatedly about scam adverts that use AI branding and fabricated celebrity endorsements to sell trading products.
That is worth knowing when judging any tool in this category. The regulation you are protected by is mostly regulation of behaviour and advertising, so the loudest performance claims are the ones most likely to be coming from someone outside the rules.
Yes. Trading your own account with software is legal in the UK and is not itself a regulated activity. What the FCA regulates is giving investment advice, managing money for other people, and how financial products are advertised.
No. blank is a tool you operate on your own broker account. It does not give investment advice, does not manage money on your behalf and never holds your funds, so it does not require FCA authorisation. It is also not a substitute for a regulated adviser, and the responsibility for your account remains yours.
blank does not. Your money stays in your own Trading 212 account and blank connects through an API key you create and can revoke. Trading 212's documentation describes no withdrawal capability on API keys, so a key cannot move money out of your account.
Yes. Automation changes nothing about tax. Gains in a General Invest account are taxable as normal and reporting them remains your responsibility. A Stocks and Shares ISA remains tax-free within its own rules. blank does not give tax advice.
It has said it does not plan a separate AI rulebook, and that existing rules including the Consumer Duty already apply to firms using AI. It has also issued repeated warnings about scam adverts using AI branding and fake endorsements.
No custody of your funds, no advice, no performance claims. Read the reasoning and decide for yourself.
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