Standard Life has denied it is stepping on any toes in the bespoke wealth management space as it launches a technology that lets advisers automatically personalise portfolios.
A press release announcing the launch of the individually managed accounts (IMA) technology primarily touted its ability to automate CGT and tax allowance instructions.
The Wrap platform service would also allow exclusions, Standard Life head of UK proposition David Tiller (pictured) told Portfolio Adviser. As an example, an adviser could create an instruction for an auditor to avoid investing in any company that was a client, Tiller said.
Tiller estimated the IMA technology could assist between 10 to 15% of existing advised clients.
There is no fee for the service. Eight discretionary managers have already committed to offering IMA investment solutions to the advisers they work with.
DFMs offering IMA solutions
| Aberdeen Standard Capital | Mercer |
| Bordier UK | Morningstar Investment Management Europe Ltd |
| LGT Vestra | Sanlam Investment Management |
| FE Investments | Sarasin & Partners |
Stepping on bespoke toes?
The IMA makes the delivery of individual client outcomes more cost effective and scalable removing the need for “expensive manual interventions”, Tiller said.
“The problem for advisers running central investment propositions or discretionary propositions on platform at the moment is the fact they don’t accommodate the clients that have different requirements. These are likely to be the wealthier, more important clients of the adviser so they have the majority running on a very well defined, centralised process and can’t accommodate some of the most important clients. The IMA now allows them to accommodate all of their clients.”
While he agreed the IMA could be described as a halfway service between bespoke portfolios and mass market solutions, he said traditional bespoke services offered by private banks or wealth managers would still have their place.
“I’d be weary to suggest that this is going toe-to-toe with the bespoke service because often they have added elements to the service, it could be portfolio lending, it could be banking type services,” he said.
ESG could be a further application
Clients interested in applying an ethical screen to their investments could be another application for the IMA technology. There are no specific screens to do this at present although the technology could be configured to make a number of exclusions, Tiller said.
“In a way the the technology will be able to execute anything which anybody can come up if there is data to be able to execute that,” he said.
The ability to deliver “personalisation at scale” would be essential for platforms’ survival in coming years, he said.
