In an otherwise quiet news week, The Platforum publish our second quarterly research guide today so this will be hitting subscribers’ desks from Monday. The (plat)Form Guide 2 reveals total IFA platform assets of £101.6bn as at Q110, a jump of 10.7% over the quarter. All of the major platforms bar two reported greater asset growth by % for the quarter and we see no reason to amend our earlier projection that IFA platform assets will hit £320bn by the end of 2012. Novia led The Platforum Leaderboard, as voted by IFA users, as at 30 April 2010, and the Form Guide breaks down in some detail who is doing well at what according to IFA users. Have a look on our homepage for details of the contents of this quarter’s Form Guide.

New this quarter is a summary of the views of 8 industry CEOs and Directors on the FSA’s latest platform discussion paper – anonymity makes for interesting candour and it’s clear that the vast majority do not think that the proposed ban on rebates is a good idea. (By the way - Wednesday 26th May is the deadline for getting your say to the FSA for those interested.)

I had a fright this week. People in their late 30s trying on skinny jeans is like 16 year olds smoking. It’s not good for you, it’s a silly idea and you hope that no-one sees you before you scuttle off. This reluctance to be seen is evident amongst all the major platforms when asked to reveal their net and gross sales. There’s great debate at the moment about transparency but when platforms are asked to reveal their stats, one starts a frustrating big game of “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” Nucleus were the only platform of those we asked who agreed to disclose both net and gross in £s and %s and it’s good to see David Ferguson’s mob practising what they preach about transparency. We hope that we will have more information on net sales available in next quarter’s report and have heard promising noises from at least one of the major platforms which is heartening.

That’s all for this week – have a great weekend

Holly