Fintech consultancy founder Ian McKenna has predicted that at least one big household name platform will “go to the wall” as a result of not providing the experience that advisers and clients need.
According to McKenna, CEO of Financial Technology Research Centre, platforms should have done “so much more, so much sooner” on integration.
“That’s why I don’t think they’ll all survive,” he added. “You are going to see a huge migration of assets.”
In terms of where those assets will go, McKenna said: “It’s not unreasonable to expect to see a vast migration of assets away from traditional platforms towards services like Wealthlink.”
In June, Intelliflo announced that it had partnered with SS&C to deliver what it described as a “deep integration”.
If you stand in the way of evolution, you go extinct.According to Intelliflo, the integration - which it named Wealthlink - enables users to invest and manage clients’ portfolios directly from its practice management system Intelliflo Office.
As well as being slow on integration, McKenna said that, combined with old technology, this meant that some platforms are creating “their own misfortune”.
“If you are a platform stuck on, even a five year old tech stack now, you’ve got a real problem. Nothing is moving faster in this world than technology.
“If you’re trying to run your business on technology that’s several years out of date or - indeed just as bad - that’s not moving as fast as it needs to, but even more, is putting in false and unnecessary restrictions and constrictions on what the adviser can do - they [platform providers] are the authors of their own misfortune."
McKenna added: “We are going to see some well known names disappear. We’ve seen well known names disappear in the life industry over the last 30 years.
“And we’ll certainly see some of the platform names disappear, because they haven’t invested. Not only have they not invested, they’ve stood in the way of evolution.
“And if you stand in the way of evolution, you go extinct.”
chloe.cheung@ft.com
