Client-led and intuitive: the new wave of technology within the alternatives space
The new wave of technology within the alternatives space has the advantage of having no archaic legacy systems and is much more akin to the client-led independent wraps than the unwieldy supermarkets that preceded them. The best of these alternative asset technologies provide a great platform with which advisers can interact and share with their clients, delivering the type of intuitive functionality and customer experience that they are well used to (and now expect) from their own personal banking.
Whether the adviser takes a look at the individual fund manager portals, independent third-party research firms such as MICAP and MJ Hudson Allenbridge, or specialist platforms such as GrowthInvest, they will now find high-quality and detailed information on products, and a near-complete coverage of the tax efficient market. This sits alongside flexible portfolio analysis tools and, in the case of our platform, the ability to invest quickly and easily into a wide range of products.
Within the world of tax efficient investing, things moved very quickly in March, where the traditional end of tax year rush was inevitably impacted. Fund managers moved quickly to add additional flexibility to their offerings, many VCTs allowed subscribers to re-evaluate and remove their subscriptions (many re-evaluating at a lower NAV). Some managers and custodians who had not offered the ability for digital application forms moved swiftly to accept digital signatures or scanned copies. Previous preferences for cheques and physical application forms (understandable in the 1990s, but unnecessary now) have been quickly replaced by digital applications and bank transfers. There is no possibility of a return to only ‘wet’ signatures being accepted now. This is a significant market shift, freeing up advisers and their clients to access the whole market via a fully digitised solution for the first time.
What next for the tax-efficient industry?
There is a huge amount that still needs to be improved and worked on within the world of tax-efficient investments: there is a need for much greater transparency on fees, where it is often still difficult to line up and evaluate the impact of the different structures and terms on the client. There is a need to create better liquidity in the secondary market, across both unlisted equities found in EIS and SEIS structures, and in the VCT market. There is a need for both the industry and government to find a way to take these investments to a much wider audience of HNWIs than the current pool of 30,000.
There is work to be done on the frequency of reporting and the ability to see real-time changes in valuations and portfolio monitoring. These developments, and with them the continued improvement of both the adviser and client experience, will all be driven by technology, and some of the last residual barriers to doing so are no longer in place.
In years to come, we will never forget these times, and the impact to society will be extraordinary and will remain difficult to discern for some time. We would of course never wish for a cataclysmic event, but it is a watershed moment and as such it provides some opportunities for reflection and change.
As I spend more time than I had ever imagined in a small part of South West London (and a lot more time interacting with Google classrooms) it is perhaps fitting that to end, I turn to a local hero and school pupil Tim Berners-Lee, Inventor of the World Wide Web to look forward: “The Web as I envisaged it, we have not seen it yet. The future is still so much bigger than the past.”
About David Lovell, Chief Operating Officer at GrowthInvest
David is the Chief Operating Officer at GrowthInvest. He has worked in the UK financial services industry for over 20 years, holding a variety of strategic director roles. David has held roles at FT.com, and played a key role in the development, growth and subsequent sale of Matrix Solutions. As well being part of several successful disruptive product launches, over the last decade David has provided consultancy and advice on distribution and fundraising strategies to a wide range of clients looking to approach the UK’s financial intermediaries and high net worth investors.
