Our regular round-up of the latest insights on investment distribution
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
DFMs and platform consistency
DFMs are a large and expanding channel for retail investment distribution, with impressive growth from the financial adviser sector via their model portfolios on platforms. Now more than ever, asset managers need to understand how DFMs construct their portfolios,...
Andrew Ashwood 09 August 2019
Consolidation continues in the platform (tech) market
We’re seeing mergers, acquisitions and partnerships in the platform technology market across Europe and the UK. Some pretty mind-boggling numbers are being thrown around in the European platform market. Allfunds’ platform will administer half a trillion euros of...
Richard Bradley 02 August 2019