The human mind is an astonishing, self-healing organism, siblings. For example, we are currently playing host to the lang nephews during the Easter holidays. They are 6 and 3 and…oh. em. gee. I had completely forgotten. How can two small beings move that much and be that loud? And the stains, dear Lord, the stains…solidarity with all those living in a pure simulation of chaos theory during the holidays. It’s all coming back to me.  

It’s not all bad, of course, you get to be Fun Uncle Mark (well, you don’t, unless your name is also Mark and you’re being a Fun Uncle. You might be a Fun Aunt. Or Fun Uncle Dave. That’s the way this sort of overly-familiar, ingratiating, break-the-ice opening to each Update works and if you don’t know that by now then I can’t help you) and get some of the nice moments too. And if they’re being too scrotey then it’s a small matter to pick them up and wheech them away; something which is sadly not so doable for the lang kittens now. 

Anyway, in between winding up very small humans and then returning them to their mother, I’ve been going back to my roots and preparing some good old fashioned platform market analysis for some people, not of this fair isle, who are less familiar than us. It’s good to go back to basics sometimes; you pick up things that by rights should be residing in the Department of the Bleedin’ Obvious but for one reason or another aren’t. One thing really struck me, so I’ll just leave it here and those of you who aren’t staring at the weather forecast and glumly girding your loins for another day of indoor pursuits and marathon Bluey watching sessions (by the way, Bluey sucks. Whatever happened to Octonauts?) can see what you think. 

When you segment out the platform market in terms of the centre of gravity of each business, something interesting happens. You have a clutch of ‘classic’ providers who serve the independent advice/planning sector. In here lies everyone from biggies like AJ Bell, Transact and Nucleus to not-quite-so-biggies like Wealthtime and Morningstar Wealth Platform. We all know what that’s about. 

You then get a wheen of vertically integrated platforms – I’m sticking Quilter in there, along with Titan, RJIS, True Potential and others. The point of these is they’re not something you just rock up and use; they generally require some degree of greater commitment to the cause. Oh, and before anyone starts moaning, I know it’s not surgical and you can use, say, the TP platform without taking the shilling, but that’s not the centre of gravity of what they do. 

Take those two segments together and stick them on the left of your 2×2 #consulting Matrix. That’s where all the assets are. Over on the right hand side we’ve got two more boxes to fill, that’s the thing with 2×2 matrices. One of those boxes needs to be for the ‘black box’ providers. These are shops which generally need you to do something over and above just being an adviser or a planner. Here you’ll find your Seccl; your SS&C Hubwise; your WealthKernel; your Third Software and so on. An exciting space for sure, but not one that most firms can easily consume. 

And our last remaining box is for what we call ‘neoplatforms’ at the lang cat, mainly because it makes things sound like they’re sort of from The actual Matrix (which was 25 years old a few days ago, by the way. You are old). These are the disruptors; the platforms that are coming through to hoover up assets from firms dissatisfied with the incumbents on the left hand side of our non-Carrie-Anne-Moss-starring matrix.  

There are loads of these right? You’ve never had more choice, right? The market is fracturing under the sheer weight of these new guys, right?  

Nope. There are three. Three. And one on the way. Platform One is there. P1 is there. Fundment is there. And Halo Invest will be there when it hits the streets. 

And this is what struck me. One of the key things that made the platform market what it is was the sheer ease of getting started with all the names we know. There were few barriers in placing assets. I don’t mean the systems were easy to use, or intuitive, or even all that great back in the day. But you signed your terms of business and got your training and off you went.  

We don’t have many of those open, come a’ ye propositions now. Everything’s wrapped up with either captive distribution or needing you to invest capital, headcount or blood sweat and tears in building some other kind of capability on top of doing awesome financial planning. And so – looping back to the start – it’s perhaps something that should have resided in the Department of the Bleedin’ Obvious that the assets aren’t flowing away from the incumbents to the upstarts anywhere near as fast as they might be.  

The counter to this is that firms are consolidating, getting big, wanting more control, more able to become their own VI shops on the left hand side and using the black-box guys so to do. There’s obviously some truth in that. But as I’ve written about before, consolidation isn’t a straightforward trend and firms breaking away from the consolidators will need a full-service, easy-to-get-started-with shop to use. 

So…yeah. If I were starting a platform up I know what box I’d try to be in. I’d make it easy to use, and easy to get started with, and then wait to see what happens.  

And your music choice this week is obviously going to be from the Matrix. It could be the Propellerheads one or the Ministry one or the Rage one, but let’s have a change of pace and go for Clubbed To Death instead. Were you listening to me Neo? Or were you looking at the woman in the red dress? 

There we are. Back to your chocolate.