Our regular round-up of the latest insights on investment distribution

This quarter we put the platforms through their paces by road testing them to get a better measure of usability and functionality. We have done this through a combination of platform demos and viewing live accounts alongside financial advisers and paraplanners....

A straw poll of millennials in my office reveals that young Londoners struggling to hoist themselves onto the housing ladder – while also paying down student debt – have no plans to retire in any conventional sense. It’s not just that they don’t think they can:...

Over the course of our Adviser Market research we have encountered many different types of advisers with varying approaches to the business of giving advice. We think that segmentation based on geography or size of firm is limited and challenge platforms and asset...

Platforum Senior Analyst, Rodolfo Crespo, comments: “This deal highlights the strong investor interest in the platform industry that we have seen recently. Fund platforms have become hugely influential for fund distribution and have significant opportunities ahead...

Uber, Airbnb, Amazon, Facebook. These are all examples of platforms. Platforms are not ordinary businesses scurrying after customers. Instead, they are so-called “multi-sided markets” that connect users on one side and suppliers on the other. Hence Uber puts as...

Does the merger of Rathbones and Smith & Williamson mark the beginning of a consolidation phase for wealth managers? Probably; because there are a number of common challenges that they share with asset managers, advice firms and platforms which are already...