Adam French, founder and CEO of Scalable Capital, was unhappy with a suggestion that potential systemic risks for the financial system could be caused by robo-advisers.
Mr Carney alluded to robo-advisers several times in a speech last week, with one comment in particular attracting attention.
He said: “In wholesale banking and markets, robo-advice and risk management algorithms may lead to excess volatility or increase pro-cyclicality as a result of herding, particularly if the underlying algorithms are overly sensitive to price movements or highly correlated.”
Mr French was spurred to pen an open letter to Mark Carney and has invited the Governor to visit his offices to see his firm’s work in person.
Mr French said: “In his speech he appears concerned about robo-advisors becoming a risk to our well-functioning financial system. The argument is that they may lead to excess volatility or increase pro-cyclicality as a result of herding. I see his attack on robo-advice as misinformed for several reasons.”
He said: “By making throwaway remarks like this there is a danger we will be stifling innovation when it is needed the most. People are unable to save for their futures as inflated fees, due to legacy technology and an unwillingness to change established processes, are eating into the majority of their returns.”
Mr French argued that assets managed by European robo-advisers were a “drop in the ocean” at £1 billion - less than 0.02 per cent of the total assets managed by the industry - when viewed in the context that the UK’s asset management sector is the second largest in the world, managing £6.9 trillion.
He said: “The recent FCA Asset Management Study has highlighted many worrying concerns about the practices of incumbent asset management firms that need to be addressed.
“These are issues that are impacting a far greater number of investors than the robo advice sector is currently serving; issues that robo-advisers can actually help fixing.”
He pointed out that herding “has been around for years” and stressed that all robo-advisers do not have exactly the same investment methodology.
Mr Carney did also appear to speak positively of robo-advice, however, referring to it as one of the drivers of “FinTech’s true promise” and “potential”.