As more clients live and invest across borders, the demand for cross-border financial services continues to grow. Mike Phillips, Commercial Director at Novia Global, explores the role international investment platforms can play in helping advisers deliver a smoother experience for internationally mobile clients.
The pros and cons of a world without borders continue to be fiercely debated in political circles. Thankfully, the argument is a lot easier to settle in the sphere of investment – and platforms are pivotal to ending any dispute.
To understand why, we first need to consider some statistics. One of the most important tells us that the number of retail financial services clients using cross-border services has been rising at pace in recent years.
In the European Union (EU), according to the most up-to-date data from the European Securities and Markets Authority, this demographic grew from 7.6 million to 10.5 million between 2022 and 2024 alone. That represents a surge of almost 40%[1].
There is a further crucial aspect to this story, which is that the number of complaints related to cross-border services has also ballooned.
This has been the case both in countries where widespread use of such services is relatively new and in countries where it has been established for some years.
Finally, there is one more shift that demands attention. The number of firms engaged in cross-border services within the EU declined slightly over the same two-year period, dropping from 380 to 370.
So what does all this mean? I believe that we can arrive at the following conclusions with reasonable confidence.
All roads lead to international platforms
First, with more and more investors becoming internationally mobile, the appetite for cross-border services is larger than it has even been. In addition, it is likely to become larger still.
Second, clients and their advisers rightly expect that such services will prove capable of fulfilling their investment needs. Unfortunately, some discover that their faith is misplaced.
Third, some providers are exiting this burgeoning market. As we will discuss in due course, competition is probably the likeliest explanation for their demise.
In my opinion, all these points support the case for international investment platforms. Ideally, this arena should offer the most user-friendly and effective means of removing the “friction” with which many cross-border services remain unhappily associated.
The basic attractions are not hard to grasp. Platforms can bring ease of use, speed, standardisation, regulatory compliance, cost-efficiency, transparency and – maybe above all – integration.
The last of these facilitates access to every one of an investor’s holdings through a single portal. In tandem, it enables all those holdings to be advised and managed by the same people.
This is obviously a long way removed from the complex and frequently confusing cross-border services that prevailed in the past.
Perhaps more significantly, it is also a long way removed from the many cross-border services that are still unable to give similar convenience and integration today.
Doing the simple things well
The suggestion that many cross-border services still fall short of expectations might be dismissed as an exaggeration or, worse still, uninformed speculation. It is neither.
The fact that the number of complaints still runs into the thousands is sufficient to tell us that clients and advisers are often disappointed.
Equally, the number of providers would not be dwindling if levels of service were considered optimal across the board.
Are platforms among the sources of dissatisfaction? Inevitably. By any measure, this is a crowded market – one in which some participants thrive and others, whether deservedly or otherwise, go out of business.
This brings us back to the issue of competition. What sets the best apart from the rest in the race to deliver frictionless cross-border services? In my view, acknowledgement of a platform’s fundamental purpose is likely to mark the dividing line between success and failure.
Ultimately, a platform should look after clients’ money, protect it, grow it and then give it back. It can be perilously easy to lose sight of this overarching mission.
Amid the scramble to appeal to a rapidly expanding audience, novel features and “enhanced” functionality are regularly given top billing. So is the promise of reduced fees.
These are noble objectives, of course, but they can sometimes turn out to be the stuff of style over substance – particularly if a platform is not backed up by sufficient experience, expertise, resources and infrastructure.
The focus should always be on what really matters, which is why there is a great deal to be said for doing the simple things well.
In the end, then, there are two key messages for cross-border services’ ever-growing user base.
The first is that international investment platforms can serve as a powerful solution in an investment world without borders. The second, crucially, is that it in advisers’ interests to choose carefully.
[1] See, for example, European Securities and Markets Authority: “ESMA publishes 2024 data on cross-border investment activity of firms”, December 22 2025 – https://www.esma.europa.eu/press-news/esma-news/esma-publishes-2024-data-cross-border-investment-activity-firms.
Main image: global, kyle-glenn-nXt5HtLmlgE-unsplash
