InvestmentsNov 1 2018

Standard Life updates Wrap platform with investment tools

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Standard Life updates Wrap platform with investment tools

David Tiller, head of UK propositions at Standard Life Aberdeen, expects most assets on the company’s Wrap platform to move to an investment management tool the company has launched.

Mr Tiller said the service, known as Professional Portfolio Manager, would allow mechanical rebalancing of portfolios, make it easier to exclude some clients from rebalancing and match portfolios to cash flows. He said the regulatory and compliance functions go further than the rules require.

Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and Exchange Trade Instruments (ETIs) can be traded on the new service for £1, which Mr Tiller said was cheaper than the previous price on the platform.

He said the aim was to make the platform "more efficient" for advisers to use, freeing them up from performing routine tasks to enable them to grow their business.

Mr Tiller said the company had been working on the new product for "six to nine months" and consulted advisers along the way.   

He said: "With so much recent effort across the market on regulation alone, it is great to be able to launch something new for advisers. Professional Portfolio Manager helps deal with the multi-faceted challenge of delivering tightly controlled individual investment solutions in a scalable manner, while still being able to deal with the natural behaviours of clients.

"To me, this marks the beginning of a new wave of platform development, and indeed, of platform architecture itself."

He said the service was not a replatforming process and clients of the Wrap platform who did not wish to use it would notice no difference to how they used the existing product.

The service will only apply to the Wrap platform, not to Standard Life's other platform, Elevate.

Minesh Patel, an adviser at EA Financial Solutions in London, said: "They are clearly trying to seperate the investment management functions from the financial planning and other services on the platform, and that is a welcome development.

"I would imagine advice firms that do a lot of fund selection and fund buying for clients will find this to be very good."

david.thorpe@ft.com