Wraps

The UK Wraps market continues to expand as new entrants such as Novia and Skandia announce their development plans. The aim of the current Wrap platform companies is to provide a range of investment tools and client aggregation services to the UK IFA community typically, but not exclusively, to support a move by IFAs away from commission based selling to a fee based financial planning model.

There are two distinct groups of Wrap service providers - Life company providers and independents. The motives behind the Life companies - such as Standard Life, NU, and AXA - entering this market is generally accepted as being defensive. Tying IFAs to their platform enables them to maintain a certain degree of control over their IFA distribution channel. For the independents such as Transact, Ascentric, Nucleus Group, 7IM, Raymond James and Novia, their rationale is one of business opportunity in a developing market.

The current fund supermarkets are also starting to make their presence felt in this space with CoFunds and FundsNetwork forming partnerships to support a broader range of investment products. Link this to the use of IFA software such as Intelliflo, 1st Software or Quay Software and a Wrap equivalent capability is created.

Winchester White has extensive experience of the developing Wrap market. For more details please contact Martin Davies.