Author: Bella Caridade-Ferreira

30 May

Posted at 10:00h in Blog

...and hope springs eternal

We ran the spring sentiment survey in the last week of April (we waited until after the first round of the French presidential election on 23rd April) until mid May. In all, there were 84 responses. Fund groups represented 62%, platforms 25% and distributors 13%. The audience was mainly British (77% ) and the rest cross-border.

15 Feb

Posted at 13:12h in Blog
We're in an extended lockdown phase as several platform clients will not be reporting their results to the stock exchange until March. That's a pretty long wait so here are a few investment platform industry highlights to keep you going until the Fundscape Platform Report is issued. 

15 Feb

Posted at 11:36h in Blog
The press is awash with stories and articles about the pros and cons of passive and active investment, active advice and robo advice, fees and the like. The often wild claims (fake news??) give investors unrealistic ideas about long-term investments and make it difficult for them to make informed choices.

02 Feb

Posted at 09:00h in Blog
The Trump effect
  • We ran the sentiment survey in the second and third week of January. By this point, Trump’s shock election as president of the US was beginning to sink in, but he had yet to take office. The run-up to his inauguration and cabinet/adviser appointments were front-page news.
  • In all, we there were 82 responses to the survey. Fund groups represented 67%, platforms 31% and distributors 2%.
  • The audience was mainly British with 78% of respondents defining themselves as UK-based and the rest cross-border or international.
  • Interestingly, there was a significant dichotomy between the positive expectations for 2017 (answers to the multiple choice questions) and the pessimistic concerns voiced in the open questions.
  • Overwhelmingly, the geopolitical environment and specifically Brexit, Trump and forthcoming elections in Europe were the main concern.
  • At the time of writing, the fixed income rotation into equity was in full swing and stock-market indices had hit all-time highs.

09 Jan

Posted at 08:00h in Blog
Each year we provide five-year platform projections and look at the main drivers of growth and change, and their significance for different stakeholders. KEY TRENDS The world is literally changing before our eyes. The nationalistic mood sweeping through global politics is re-setting government policy globally and there is a similar mindset shift sweeping through financial services. Whether fund managers and platforms like it or not, in this low-growth world the old way of doing business is no longer viable or sustainable and investors are no longer willing to subsidise it.  That means increased focus on the cost of investment solutions and their component parts (advisers, platforms, fund managers...).

24 Nov

Posted at 12:16h in Blog
Standard Life has confirmed that the Elevate platform will continue as a discrete platform proposition and will not be merged into the Standard Life one.  Advisers will be pleased as punch. And relieved.

17 Oct

Posted at 08:30h in Blog
It’s beginning to look like a trend. First we had the tiny Aegon platform making a play for the massive Cofunds platform, and last week it was announced that Interactive Investor is to buy TD Direct, TD Bank’s European direct business.

12 Oct

Posted at 08:00h in Blog
When RDR became reality and the advice gap widened, it was only a question of time before a FANG (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google) or a traditional supermarket chain like Tesco, Waitrose or Sainsbury’s disrupted the financial services market with their client knowledge and big data.

19 Sep

Posted at 08:30h in Blog
Gatekeepers.  That word strikes fear into many fund managers' hearts and rightly so. These are the people who increasingly influence and direct the volume of sales in the UK, and if a fund group isn't on their radar it's potentially missng out on some sizeable assets. The problem becomes even more acute when the investment outlook is stormy and investors are taking shelter.

30 Aug

Posted at 12:41h in Blog
There was a visceral reaction to the Brexit vote in July. Respondents were negative... but much more positive about the second half of the year.