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!

Q409 was the quarter of the newer, smaller platforms. Of course it’s easier to record dramatic growth coming off a small base but we estimate that AXA’s £620 million is nearly double what they had in Q3 and Novia, Nucleus and Standard Life all clock in around the 20% growth mark. Well done to all. That notwithstanding, the big three still account for 78% of platform assets. Chuck Transact into the mix and the top 4 represent 87%. That’s not going to change overnight.

Now back to those 4 platforms which grew the most in Q4 and it’s telling to see that, from our IFA rankings and reviews, they are the top 4 for “BDM support” and come amongst the top 5 for “Quality of Customer Service”. They notably major on the service side and are typically not quite so strong on the features or functionality elements. We’re pretty excited about looking at these trends over the year (in our nerdy platform way) which will tell us what it is that IFAs really value.

All of these facts and figures will be aggregated with our IFA ratings and feedback and reported in our quarterly research, The (plat)Form Guide which will be out in 2 weeks’ time. (That’s a subtle plug, by the way). I’ve interviewed CEOs and Directors from 10 platforms for this research to build a picture of where the business leaders think thing are headed this year and I think it’s generally a year of taking stock, building for scale and improving the current proposition rather than shooting the lights out with new, ‘whizzy’ features. Getting ready for RDR is clearly the big topic (and also, still, the big unknown!)

A final thought for potential new platform entrants. The average figure given by our platform bosses for the % of new business they expect to see from signed-up IFAs this year averages at slightly over 75%. That’s quite a big challenge to take on board and really drives home the need for a differentiated proposition if you’re coming to what is becoming a full market. Many IFAs are now in a position where they’ve had the first smooch and are well on the way to platform second base. You have to be some kind of Lothario to get in the way of that. I could extend this tortured analogy to assess the possible 7 year itch amongst those using the more established players but I’ll quit whilst I’m still ahead (maybe?)

Have a romantic weekend all,

Holly