So today the lang cat launches its very first commercially available market analysis report. Its title is ‘You want how much?’ and the subject, predictably, is platform pricing. We’re pretty excited about it. You can get a sneakypeeky here (just click on the image of the report).

The cornerstone of the Guide is an analysis of 17 leading platforms across 10 key portfolio points for GIA/ISA and SIPP. This flattens out platform pricing to its bare bones and re-expresses everything as basis points. Tranching, tiering, fixed charges, collars, they’re all in there. We do miss out transaction charges (except for Alliance Trust Savings) and set-up charges, but that’s for a reason. The reason is that we have never seen anyone come up with a common framework for getting to a baseline price to which conditional charges can be added. That’s what we’re doing here, and that’s why we think it has value. For really pound-accurate projections for specific clients, we’d recommend popping over to Synaptic Comparator, which has fund discounts and all that kind of thing built in. That’s not what this report is for, again, we’re baselining here.

The report is for sale to providers for £1,500 + VAT and advisers for £150 + VAT. Sneaky discount codes may or may not be available for advisers, keep your eyes open. We have deliberately gone for a paid-for model across the board as pricing is such a sensitive area we didn’t want to take sponsorship. Advisers are famous for not paying for stuff like this, so we’ll see. Quite prepared to look stupid, no change there sort of thing.

Other stuff in the report, we put forward a new classification system for platform pricing as unbundled, bundled and semi-bundled doesn’t work any more. We look at some alternative shapes that haven’t been tried yet, and we take a close look at tranching vs tiering and what it does to the charges clients suffer.

There’s an in-depth pricing market overview, some RDR readiness and commercial impact stuff in there, a few snarky comments about actuaries and an explanation of the Scots phrase â??a sair fechtâ??. It’s easy to read, full of good info and although we’re biased we think it kicks butt.

The Guide is designed to be part of advisersâ?? ongoing monitoring of the market to help with their due diligence requirements. We think providers will find it useful as a short-cut for monitoring the market too.

Sales pitch over. If you’re an adviser go here to get it, if you’re a provider just email Mark or go here. What are you waiting for?

Thanks to: Moira Dempster (www.moiradempster.com) for typesetting and design. Gareth Thompson (www.codepotato.co.uk) for web design and lots of others for support along the way. Cheers!