In the driving seat
It’s early days for Hubwise and by all accounts the business has been a bit overwhelmed with interest. We’ve had a look at it and there’s lots in there (it’s in the Lang Cat’s platform directory if you want to take a look), but it’s important to stress that in this very low-cost model the adviser really is in the driving seat. That means that a lot of the support you’d normally enjoy from a retail platform simply isn’t there; you have to be much more self-sufficient.
This isn’t unique to Hubwise; you see this with other technologies too. But it needs firms to approach it with a realistic attitude to what a platform structure operating at something like the third of the cost of some others can realistically deliver.
The third contender is just starting to hit the market. Seccl is run by Hugo Thorman, late of Ascentric, and David Harvey, platform genius and uber-nerd (I mean that as a compliment). Seccl is, again, a very low-cost offering that will bill the adviser firm rather than clients. Typical costs are around 10bp, which is derived from a mix of per client and activity charges. It’s very modern, very clean and focused absolutely on the basics of a platform with no funny business.
Again, it needs companies to understand that it won’t have teams of support administrators on hand, and it will ask firms to step in formally as the platform operator. In common with the other two providers, Seccl will also have a route to market for those who can’t quite bring themselves to that point; in this instance, through P1 Investment Management, which is a discretionary fund manager based in Bristol.
Other providers that fancy really branching out can become, in effect, multi-tenant platforms in their own right over time with Seccl, in a similar way to what Embark has done with FNZ, or Fusion Wealth has done with SEI.
None of these offerings are a cheap version of a retail platform; they all have more nuance than that. For firms that can afford some capital expenditure and which can create some infrastructure to support the additional responsibilities that come with being a platform operator, there are some really interesting options out there. One company we spoke to recently that is reviewing the market said “we just can’t see anything that excites us.”
