Santander UK is considering plans to launch an investment platform next year, aimed at customers from the traditional ‘retail’ to high net worth, a spokesman has confirmed.
The platform will be open to direct customers, as well as via an intermediary.
A spokesperson for Santander UK said: “Santander recognises that the platform market is growing and we are exploring various options to enter this market in order to deliver services ranging from simple, ‘non-advised’ platforms (where investors make their own decisions about what to buy) through to ‘full advice’ and discretionary services.
“It is early in the planning process for this service, but Santander does believe the best way to provide these important services to its customers is through a strategic alliance with a third party.”
The lender is one of several providers looking at offering online guidance tools, since the regulator published a consultation paper earlier this year which clarified what services would not fall under regulated advice.
At the time, the Financial Conduct Authority said it had produced the guidance consultation paper because, while firms are clear on the requirements for full advice and for execution-only business, they are struggling to navigate the options in between, such as simplified or limited advice services and sales without personal recommendations.
The formal outcome of that consultation is expected in the early part of 2015.
However, speaking at the Association of Professional Advisers annual gala dinner last week, the FCA’s chairman said that decisions over how to provide a professional advice service to mainstream clients, which offers more than execution-only transactional systems but is commercially viable for advisory firms, remains an “unresolved” issue.
John Griffith-Jones said that since taking over as FCA chairman he had sought to clarify some of these issues, but that it had not yet been able to answer queries relating to “guidance vs advice, and independent vs restricted advice”.
While one attendee at the event suggested the comments could be taken to suggest the regulator was “putting restricted advice back on the table” for clarification, Mr Griffiths-Jones seemed to focus more attention on perceptions of an ‘advice gap’ and on access to “properly qualified” advisers, especially in the wake of pension freedoms.
donia.o’loughlin@ft.com
