I work as an independent compliance consultant working mainly with IFA firms around London and the South-East. I have several firms for whom I undertake different duties. I have previously undertaken platform research and distributed it among my client firms.
One of the firms asked me to undertake research on Managed Portfolio Services (MPS) as they had been running their own portfolios and were looking to move to a third-party arrangement.
I looked around the market for reports and found Defaqto, the Langcat and Next Wealth reports. The first two were commissioned by OMW WealthSelect and unsurprisingly focussed on that. When I looked at the reports, they had a core of MPS providers but they each had some that did not appear on the other reports. I went onto FE Analytics where I found a lot more. But none of them had as much detail as I wanted or the breadth of providers, so I thought that I would just have to do it myself.
This research is to show the MPS that are currently available for IFAs to use for their clients’ investment strategies.
There are many providers in the market offering MPS. It is an extremely competitive market. Many Discretionary Fund Managers (DFM) offer managed portfolios for investors who want their money managed professionally, but do not have the size of investment that would warrant the expense of a bespoke discretionary fund management service, which is used for High Net Worth (HNW) investors. Rather than miss out on the Mass Affluent (MA) market of people who want to invest, but not the same magnitude, the Managed Portfolio Services have been introduced.
I am looking to provide information on a wider range of providers to show how any Managed Portfolio Service chosen by a firm is competitive in the market and why it may be chosen to suit the clients of the advising firm.
The more I looked into the MPS, the more I realised that there are a lot of very good practitioners in the field – all apparently with their own views on investment and how much better they were than their competitors.
This report can only be considered to be a snapshot of the market in April 2020. Whilst I have a wider range of providers than any other report that I have seen on MPS providers, there are still a lot of providers that are not in this report, simply due to the numbers available.
It just proves that there is an investment strategy to suit every investor. They just need to be discovered and identified.
With all these managed portfolio services providers available, it is a mystery why any financial planning firm would want to devote so much of their valuable time running their own portfolios.
The full MPS IFA Annual Report is available to purchase for just £249.99 +VAT*
For more information please email kim.wonnacott@ifamagazine.com
*For professional advisers only.
IFA Magazine will be running a webinar on 7th July, to discuss the pros and cons for advisers in using an MPS.
For more information contact kim.wonnacott@ifamagazine.com
