Almost half (46%) of advisers expect further growth in managed portfolio services usage, according to new research by Morningstar Wealth and The Lang Cat.
That figure rises to 81% among advisers who already use MPS for most clients but not all.
The report, based on a survey of a 182 advice professionals, explores how effectively platforms and MPS work together and why alignment is becoming critical for advisers.
It found that advisers increasingly view platforms and MPS not as separate choices but as a single operating system for delivering advice.
Steve Owen, head of proposition EMEA at Morningstar Wealth, said: “A consistent theme in the research is that advisers do not experience platform and MPS as separate decisions, but as one system. Where platforms still run MPS as a collection of separate parts, it becomes harder for firms to explain what they are recommending, harder to report on outcomes, and harder to evidence decisions within a CIP, often generating unhelpful ‘paperwork’ along the way.
“In practice, advisers are recommending an MPS solution, not the underlying holdings. How well that recommendation works day-to-day is shaped by platform capability, governance and reporting, rather than by portfolio design alone.”
According to the research, the importance of centralised investment proposition capability is a key factor, with more than eight in 10 (82%) advisers rating CIP capability as very important when selecting or reviewing platforms.
The research also suggests a link between increased MPS usage and better alignment with retirement income strategies. Advisers were happier with the alignment between their CIP and platform where they used an MPS for clients, it found.
Steve Nelson, insight director at the lang cat, added: “We wanted to get beyond the typical first order MPS debate – adoption charts, cost comparisons and performance headlines and the like – and look at what MPS usage really means inside advice firms day to day. We dug into what determines whether it feels like an enabler or a constraint for advice businesses, and how much the platform affects it in the adviser CIP.”
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