Our regular round-up of the latest insights on investment distribution
Risky business – how advisers are using risk profiling tools
Advisers are increasingly making use of third-party risk profiling tools, with over 70% of adviser firms now telling us at Platforum that they use them. But how they use these planning tools varies greatly from firm to firm, as we found in Harrogate at our most...
Mariam Pourshoushtari 20 September 2019
Platforms: back to basics
Over the decade that Platforum has been covering platforms, we’ve seen the market evolve and mature. But sometimes it’s worth getting back to basics and posing a much simpler question: what exactly is a platform? In our soon-to-be-published UK Adviser Platforms...
Andrew Ashwood 13 September 2019
UK advisers move to rebalance charges
Over 90% of UK adviser firms have changed their approach to adviser charging in the last two years, according to our survey for the latest Platforum report - UK Adviser Market: Costs and Charges. The most glaring trend is towards cutting charges for higher value...
Mariam Pourshoushtari 06 September 2019
Asset management at a crossroads
The role of asset management looks to be changing as fund managers lose influence and experience falling profit margins. Asset management used to be the main bit of the value chain. If investment performance was good, it didn’t matter how far removed fund managers...
Jeremy Fawcett 30 August 2019
Taxing times for rebates in the UK
Rebates have been confirmed as taxable this month, in the long-running clash between Hargreaves Lansdown and HMRC. This effectively confirms ‘superclean’ share classes are the most tax-efficient mechanism for delivering preferential rates on funds, rather than the...
Richard Bradley 23 August 2019
Challenger tanks on the investment lawn
Challengers are moving into the online investing arena. Revolut has started rolling out ‘zero-commission’ stock trading, Robinhood has received approval from the FCA to expand its services to the UK, while Freetrade has the first-mover advantage in the UK and is...
Cristina Puscas 16 August 2019