Ex-Thesis director returns with MPS comparison site for advisers

Mabel Insights has scraped public information on some 80 discretionary fund managers, comprising more than 1,000 MPS portfolios, which it has analysed and is offering to advisers free of charge.

It has also risk rated all portfolios, allowing advisers to analyse the MPS market using the same risk parameters.

Further partnerships with DFMs are planned to offer advisers more in depth information which isn't publicly available.

The tool was launched by Lawrence Cook, a former director at Thesis, and later head of UK distribution at Atomos Wealth, and two former colleagues, who identified this as an area in which advisers are currently underserved.

"For IFAs at the moment that world is a bit opaque. It's very difficult for advisers to compare apples with apples, and to get insights and data like that at the touch of a button," Cook told FT Adviser.

"So an IFA will be thinking about model portfolios, which we know [is] the direction of travel for most IFAs or certainly the majority...and we think that's a spot that is underserved at the moment.

"We can deliver that service and we're going to do so for free for IFAs."

We will be seen as pretty disruptive in the marketplace.Lawrence Cook, CEO of Mabel Insights

He called it a "groundbreaking opportunity" for advisers because "at the moment to get that kind of information, they need to scratch around themselves to get it from individual DFMs, which is hard work, and then [they need to] pay for it."

Mabel promises to hold all the information advisers need on DFMs for their due diligence, CIP research and client specific reports, in one place.

In practice, Cook explained, this meant being able to quickly compare and contrast a list of providers based on criteria such as active versus passive or blended.

The tool will also allow advisers to compare MPSs on price, while recognising that individual firms will have negotiated their own fee with the DFM.

Cook said: "There's a lot of great work that [other consultancies] have done that provides really good information of a qualitative nature and about the product features.

"But none of them really deliver at the touch of a button hard data, which really gives the investment committee, which typically an IFA will have, [the opportunity] to analyse the model portfolio service and say, right, well, how does this work, how can we quickly check the validation of what we've already selected. Or if we're looking for a new provider, how do we sort that out."

'Fair' to DFMs

Mabel is free for IFAs and is financed through 'enriched data partnerships' with DFMs. Without these partnerships it mainly consists of data that is publicly available.

At the time of writing, Cook said he was speaking to 10 DFMs, which were keen, and another 12 which were interested in partnering up.

The target for the year was 50, though Cook stressed it was not imperative for the running of the business to get there.

But he is confident the service will sign up a good number of DFMs. "Clearly, if you're serious about distributing discretionary model portfolio services to the IFA, I think most DFM businesses would be keen to to get involved," he said.

He has pledged to be "fair to all DFMs" in the services's pricing structure. "In that sense, I suspect, we will be seen as pretty disruptive in the marketplace."

Lawrence said the project had emerged out of a meeting with his former colleague at Thesis, Gaurav Gupta, and a further former colleague.

"We all felt that this was something that the market wants, and we can deliver it better and cheaper than it was done at the moment," he said.

"[DFMs] will find not only does it deliver great service and data back to the DFMs about IFA behaviour...which will be valuable to them. I think they'll find they might be able to save money elsewhere.

"So cheaper for IFAs, more cost effective for DFMs, more transparent, and ultimately good for consumers too."

carmen.reichman@ft.com