Hello you.
I am a bit dizzy. There is so much going on that I’ve started measuring my life in calendar invites and stress episodes.
Last Tuesday I was in London talking to journalists about our new paper, Unlocking the next phase of MPS Growth, with our friends at Morningstar Wealth. Thursday was the big launch. Saturday was the big Scottish Cup semi-final between Dunfermline and Falkirk, which I will be referencing until the heat death of the universe. (I am approaching this with the emotional maturity of a toddler with a new sticker album). Sunday I was at a goat farm with some kids and some other kids (wayhey) for a birthday party. In the evenings we’ve been clearing the house for renovation works that kicked off on Monday, so I am now approximately 55% dust. And yesterday I was with my colleague Kate doing some sessions with 3rd year Business Studies students at Earlston High School. I don’t know when things turn into too many things, but I think I’m at that stage of things.
In uncertain times, it is good to have something steady you can cling onto. Some people choose mindfulness. I choose TCWU.
Right. The paper.
Last week we launched our new report on MPS on-platform, which is a fancy way of saying we spent a lot of time talking to the advice profession about what happens after the strategy and decisions are made and the platform login begins. It’s about the real-life version of the proposition. The version with cash, tax, transfers, withdrawals, reporting, and the odd moment where you stare at the screen thinking, “Why is it doing that?”
A lot of the findings are basically a polite way of saying: governance has grown up. 87% of firms told us they now have a documented CIP, and most have the usual supporting machinery around it. This is not “nice to have” territory anymore. It’s the operating system.
One of the main points running through it is that advisers increasingly do not experience platform selection and investment selection as two separate decisions. They experience one joined-up delivery system. 82% rate CIP capability as “very” or “extremely” important when selecting or reviewing a platform. Also, 79% say their platform due diligence and CIP due diligence are closely aligned. So, if you are still treating “platform” as admin and “investment” as the real work, the profession would like a quiet word.
Sounds obvious, right, but lots of firms didn’t get to today’s reality by design. Platform relationships are sticky. Propositions evolve. Regulation shifts. Clients change. Decisions that were made years apart, sometimes by different people, under different commercial pressures, now have to work together as if they were chosen as a pair. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they resemble… well, a cup semi-final that has gone to penalties.
Which brings us neatly-not-neatly back to Dunfermline v Falkirk.
It finished 0-0 and went to penalties, which is football’s way of saying “let’s all have another 45 minutes of extreme misery.” Nobody cared about “the beautiful game” at that point. It was doing the basics well while your stomach tried to leave your body. The Pars won 4-2 and unlocked the next phase of their Scottish Cup journey, and I am still not normal about it.
In some ways, that is a bit like phase two of MPS. By “some ways” I mean “not really all that many ways”.
Regardless, MPS is mainstream now. Most of the easy wins (Aberdeen in the quarter final) are behind us. What comes next is not a grand argument about whether outsourcing exists. It is the unsexy stuff: whether platforms and providers can make MPS feel simple in the places it currently strains, like tax, cash and retirement income. In fact, when we asked what holds wider usage back, it’s practical, not ideological: cost and value (39%) and tax (37%) are right at the top of the list.
When it works, it feels like capacity and consistency. When it doesn’t, it becomes a series of small administrative riddles that someone has to solve at 4.55pm, usually while you are already 55% dust.
And this is why views on growth and big predictions about the future aren’t uniform. We do see appetite for more. 46% of people expect further growth overall, and only 4% think usage will fall. But it depends where you are starting from. If you already run MPS for almost everyone, what’s left is edge cases. If you’re a light user or a non-user, the prize for MPS providers is still basic adoption. In both cases the gating factor is often the same: does the platform actually support the proposition in a way that clients can understand and firms can evidence?
This is why we keep banging on about the platform being part of CIP due diligence. It’s not two procurement exercises. It’s one joined-up delivery system. Treating them as separate workstreams is a legacy habit, and it leaves firms adapting the proposition to the platform rather than choosing the delivery system that actually supports the proposition.
If you want the practical takeaway, it’s this. Advisers are effectively saying: “Stop making us translate the platform back into the proposition.” Treat MPS as the mandate. Make reporting resemble what we actually tell clients they own, not 30 holdings in a trenchcoat. Sort the tax and cash realities. Fix the bits of workflow that create 4.55pm drama. That’s what makes the difference between MPS feeling effortless, and MPS feeling like a penalty shootout.
Right. I’m off to hoover dust, apologise to my lungs, and watch the semi-final highlights again for the 68th time.
Only one possible choice, given my semi-final attire, for the music this week. Here’s the Pars iconic walk-on music, Into the Valley by the Skids.
