Here at NextWealth, we monitor the rapidly evolving UK platform market in the wider context of a shifting advice and distribution landscape. We will share our key thoughts on the market and individual players over the coming week.  It is undoubtedly a challenging time for retail wealth management with high levels of market uncertainty. But it is also an exciting time for change and innovation.

The first topic in our series is how platforms fare against the other tech that financial advice firms use.

We asked financial advisers to rate the technology providers they use on four criteria. The average scores are listed below.

Green or red arrows indicate an increase or decrease of at least 0.10 points from October 2022 to October 2023.

Platforms continue to score the highest amongst the tech that advisers use. As shown below, platforms are rated highest for their value for money and lowest for integration with other technologies.

Adviser’s reviews for the tech they use

All scores are out of 5, red indicates a fall YoY, green a rise

While more platforms experienced a decline in adviser reviews this year, the category average improved due to strong performance from a few.

Frustration is growing for the ability to integrate the platform with other pieces of adviser tech. While platforms score higher on this criterion than other types of tech, scores were down for 8 out of 14 platforms.

Further details on adviser reviews of platforms and our extended advice tech research is available for purchase in the NextWealth Adviser Tech Stack Report.

For financial advice professionals, We would love your voice to be heard too as we continue to collate the latest views and trends.

Your effort and contributions don’t go unnoticed, we really REALLY value your input so we give back to you too. As a member of our research panel, you receive a digital copy of each of our reports which you take part in in either via a survey or interview. You will only ever get invited to take part 4 times a year maximum.

On top of that, we host small gatherings of adviser-only national roundtables (usually in a pub near you), to debate and collectively share ideas on topical matters of interest. No providers, no formality – just you and us. We would love you to come along.

Mark Aldous, Quantitative researcher