In a frankly horrible volatile week, we confirm that at least good old platforms keep on plodding upwards as we announce £164bn in adviser platforms as at Q211, growth of 5.34% for the quarter. Quite telling is that – this time a year ago, we reported that 10 platforms had more than £1bn AUA. This quarter’s Form Guide to be published next week identifies 12 platforms with more than £2bn. Go girl! (For platforms are female, you know. Practical, multi-taskers who are happy to sit in the background, doing all the hard work but not hogging the limelight x).

Mutterings into their claret this week as the Treasury Select Committee’s suggestion to delay the RDR are immediately knocked back by the FSA. “The Treasury Select Committee deprecate the Authority’s action” which I think is as close to swearing and word play as Westminster gets. I suspect egos will keep this ball in the air for a while yet.

In the interim, what are advisers and providers to do? I think there’s a lot to be learnt from the newer wrap providers here.

Due diligence fever has been sweeping the platform world. My response is to wonder if I am turning into a Communist, or even a Trot? Let me explain.......

In a week where global news highlights how corporate structures and ultimately desire to turn the biggest profit brings out the worst in people, in our much less sinister financial services world, I see signs of overcomplicating things perhaps for the good of the bottom line ahead of the customer.

Now here, I'm chastising people like me, not IFAs.

The Platforum's MD Holly Mackay will be Guest Speaker at this event being run by Capita Financial Software. The Platform Due Diligence Day brings together some of the best minds in the industry to help delegates take on today's challenges. It serves to educate, inform, provoke discussion and debate and promote co-operation and development in the platform industry.

The event achieves this through a cutting edge series of keynote speeches from Axa, Aviva, Fidelity Funds Network and Royal London with the focus towards platform selection and due diligence.

Two big bits of news this week – the cash rebate hoopla and Monday’s publication of Pulitzer-prize winning research, The (plat)Form Guide Issue 5.

On cash rebates, for what it’s worth, we add our voice to the majority and agree that banning cash rebates seems a contrived and awkward ‘solution’. As long as clear mandates for truly transparent and consistent disclosure are in place, we think cash rebates are the best workable solution.

“The third quarter of 2010 saw total platform AUA increase by over 10% (in relative terms). This surge in assets reflects Fidelity changing how they report their assets and inclusion of SEI and other platforms assets for the first time.”

This week the FSA published its long awaited consultation paper on the regulation of the platform market. The full report can be downloaded below and we offer a summary of our thoughts also:

Key Points

Adviser charging will come from a platform cash account and be agreed by the adviser and their client – no provider or platform influence. No surprises there. Moving to platform usage, very welcome clarification provided I think on this age-old question about whether advisers can use just one platform.

We speak to many IFAs who are currently wondering how to approach the platform selection process. In response to a large demand, we offer a few tips and pointers here although every IFA practice is different and will have very different service requirements.

In an exciting World Exclusive (oh come on – if you don’t blow your own trumpet, who else will!) The Platforum can announce that IFA platform assets rose to £91.7bn as at 31 December 2009, representing a rise of 7.9% for the quarter. Not quite the meteoric rises we have seen over some quarters but (to use a very crude metric as a benchmark) with a FTSE rise of some 5%, it’s still a respectable growth figure for a Christmas quarter where we know most people packed up shop mid-December in the snow and general exhaustion of a tough year!

We released a preview issue of our new quarterly platform research yesterday – The (plat) Form Guide is available to all our subscribers on the homepage. Platforms recorded a strong comeback in Q309 to record an impressive 18.8% growth from June alone.