The lang cat’s State of the Platform Nation report is our annual deep dive into platforms in the UK.
The 2024/25 report is, remarkably to us at least, the 13th edition of the report. That’s more than there are Fast and Furiouses. Safe to say we’re well versed now in looking at how the past year has gone and how we think the platform market will evolve into the future.
2024 will go down as a record year for new business placed on platforms, but with a stark backdrop of spiralling outflows. That means not all that much to go around in terms of net sales, with much of the growth coming from positive markets.
It was also a year of significant political change, with Labour putting an end to 14 years of Conservative-led government.
Here in the rolling fields of platform land, we entered the second year of higher interest rates. Though inflation steadily fell, at the time of writing it still remains above the Bank of England’s target.
On top of this we had the first full year of Consumer Duty, arguably the most far-reaching regulatory changes since the RDR in 2013, and the continued competition from traditionally non-platform products like annuities, cash and other investments that fare better in a higher interest rate environment.
To close out the year, we had Labour’s first Budget since we had a mere five Fast and Furious films to contend with. While some pre-Budget predictions were wide of the mark, capital gains tax was raised and there was the announcement that pensions would no longer be exempt from inheritance tax from April 2027.
This annual report is supposed to be just that – a look at the year – rather than our Adviser Briefing which looks at discrete quarters. But we do look at how 2024 compares to previous years and conditions, and make some assumptions about how all of the above might shape the platform market in future years.
This edition tackles a few big questions and more. For example:
– What does scale mean for growth?
– How are advisers and platforms tackling changes in regulation and from the Budget?
– What about the D2C market, targeted support and the Advice Guidance Boundary Review?
– And what do members of the advice profession think about the providers they use?
It’s hard to do that with just information about platforms. We draw on lots of other angles to triangulate and qualify how we see the market. We pull on other bits of research we’ve conducted and secondary research, as well as trends afforded from Analyser, our due diligence and comparison tool.
The report is available, free of charge, to subscribers to Analyser’s Everything plan.
If we did sell it to advisers as a standalone report, we’d charge £300+ VAT.
That’s just shy of the cost of an annual Everything subscription to Analyser. It goes without saying, that’s not all you get when you sign up.
Sounds like good value?
Give it a go yourself.
Sign up for a 14 day free trial and ******@**************al.com/bookings/”>book a time for a conversation with the team.
