This cost either needs to be charged to the customer, or soaked up within the adviser’s business, neither of which are a palatable proposition. Broadly speaking, most platforms offer similar functionality and pricing.
It is unlikely the customer would notice any significant difference in proposition by moving from one platform to another, and the pricing will be roughly the same, or worse, more expensive.
Add in the difficulty of saying to a client: “Sorry, that platform I previously recommended, well, things didn’t pan out the way I was hoping, so I’d like to move you to another platform, but please believe all my other advice”, and we suspect there won’t be a mass migration off platforms going through a consolidation exercise.
Thematic review
However, the recent FCA thematic review, Assessing Suitability: Research and Due Diligence of Products and Services, highlighted the risk of “status quo” bias and especially an “if it isn’t broke don’t fix it” attitude. While the incumbent platform might not be broken, the decision to stick or twist is a really difficult and crucial point for advisers to assess.
Considering the desire (highlighted elsewhere within the FCA thematic review) for an advisory firm to have “a culture of challenge” in place, this decision should be reviewed on a regular basis, ideally discussed by a number of people within the advisory firm.
Clear criteria for platform selection and suitability should be agreed, with the incumbent and post-consolidation platforms subsequently assessed against these criteria.
These findings should be documented, then reviewed on a regular basis, with triggers in place to initiate a review outside the regular frequency, for example, if service seriously deteriorates or there is a change in pricing.
To help advisers through this work, the providers need to take responsibility and provide access to clear factual information regarding the current and future state of the platform.
However, advisers also need to recognise that successfully navigating this change is a partnership, and will require some commitment and action by the advisers themselves to ensure a smooth migration.
Central to this is the point of implementation, when systems and processes are likely to change. Advisory firm business owners should seek out the details of when these changes are expected to come through, and commit to freeing up advisers, paraplanners and admin staff so that they can be appropriately trained on the new system.
Obviously, the providers have a role to play here, but adviser firms need to ensure they take responsibility for their own training. It is unreasonable to not invest the time it takes to learn the new system, only to subsequently start shouting post-live when your business grinds to a halt.
