How do you see the platform market evolving in the UK? Can you see platforms becoming a vital part of how advisers do business?

Our research into advisers who are already doing business through the platforms suggests that firms which are migrating clients onto wrap platforms are already reaping real benefits. The majority of IFAs said that moving clients onto a platform had enabled them to offer a more holistic service whilst cutting their administrative burden significantly.
Using platforms, advisers are often able to offer their clients a wider range of investment options. Unbundled and transparent charging offered by ‘deep’ wrap platforms was also seen as a real advantage to IFAs striving to be paid through fees for advice rather than via commission payments.
Some are even using wrap migration as the catalyst for laying out their service proposition to clients very clearly for the first time – meeting clients face to face more regularly, defining clients’ risk profiles and offering continuous, even daily, valuations via the chosen platform.
All these benefits generate real customer benefits very fast. The IFAs we spoke to are seeing an average of four out of five of their clients migrating their assets across to a wrap when the benefits have been fully explained to them.
Most people believe that migration to wraps will accelerate over the next two years as platform providers improve their offerings and both the costs and time-scales, associated with migrating assets onto them, continue to fall. We personally think that deep wraps offerings have a very bright future and this perhaps explains why we are still seeing new platform offerings coming to market recently.