What do advisers really want from their platforms? Drawing on findings from the latest State of the Platform report, Rich Mayor, Senior Analyst at the lang cat, looks at the improvements advisers are calling for most loudly and what these demands reveal about the future of the platform market.
It can be (mostly) fun and useful looking at data points for advice professionals’ experiences of platforms and tracking it against outflows, net sales, etc.
It helps to give a data-led picture of the platform market – its state of health, who is doing well and what do those who use them think of it and all that lovely stuff.
Indeed, that is the backbone on which we here at the lang cat have developed our State of the Platform (SOTPN) report. Over the 14 years we’ve been collecting data, it has given us a rich source of which we can draw from to see how things have developed over the past decade or so.
But sometimes, along with the data, it’s worth asking the more open questions and assessing experience-led testimony to accompany all the stats.
For instance, we asked advice professionals in this year’s SOTPN: “What would you highlight as the biggest single improvement needed from platforms this year?”
We collected the answers and reverse coded them, namely, we read them and arranged them in categories.
Platforms are part of the furniture for just about every advice firm, along with a cashflow modelling coffee table, a back-office sofa and suitability tv unit. But some platform furniture matches the advice firm tech front room better than others.
Therefore, there’s value in looking into prevailing sentiment of what an adviser wish list for optimum platform performance in the future looks like.
It can tell us things about both the platforms and the people using them, the issues they’re facing, the infrastructure that needs to change and why some might be doing better than others.
Let’s have a look at some of the more pertinent things that came up when we asked that question.
Integration, data flow and connectivity
A big part of what we saw in adviser responses about data integration, was that the tone generally sat somewhere between malaise and apathy.
As we’ve alluded to, the platform is a necessary piece of furniture for advice so it is natural advisers would like to see it operate smoothly within their wider tech stack and processes.
Improvements in such experience were often expressed as:
- better integration with back-offices and CRM systems
- incorporating straight through processing
- the use of two-way data feeds
- more API and standardisation across platforms
- the ability to input data once and push it to multiple tools
In the absence of integration, good user experiences can reduce friction in doing business. However, API-driven integration and heeding the demand for straight through processing (seen as the most important fix) do not seem like unreasonable asks from technology in 2026.
Service quality and human support
Getting service right, in an ideal world, is seen as getting the basics right. We don’t, however, live in an ideal world. The advice professionals who experienced poor service bemoaned the bad call handling, a lack of ownership of queries and found themselves dealing with inexperienced staff.
There was general a perception amongst those who used to get good service when platforms where smaller that as they began to scale and outsource, service levels and quality dropped.
Now, to be fair to providers, as they scale, platform servicing can become difficult. It almost always means doing more with less. But that’s not necessarily an excuse for not getting it right or – as some expressed – getting it very, very wrong.
It is worth pointing out that not all platforms are equal in this criticism, but it’s also worth pointing out that the most common catalyst for an adviser switching platform is due to experiencing poor service.
Reporting
It seems to be a general experience amongst advice professionals that data is not hard to put into platforms, but precise data can be hard to extract from them, which is naturally frustrating when it comes to everyday advice processes.
One area that is both generally indicative of said frustrations and becoming an increasing issue for advisers is getting data for CGT calculations and reporting.
Annual tax packs and excess income reporting are also areas where, if platforms can provide a consistent experience of getting clean, up-to-date data, it would prove invaluable to their job of servicing clients.
In the same way, planners are also looking for better annual reviews and ongoing reporting tools; transaction level data for audit and FCA reporting; adviser dashboards, ISA allowances, cash and beneficiary nominations.
This is one of the areas of increasing incremental prevalence; providers who make data accessible will be well placed to cultivate user loyalty and appreciation.
The perfect platform
So, what does a platform that advisers will love – or at least not hate – using look like for 2026 and beyond?
Well, from the horse’s mouth – a proposition that works well with their other tools, where if things go wrong, an experienced person is on hand to answer the phone, and all the data they may need to explain to a client what is going on with their money, is readily available and accurate.
Now, many across the industry will be willing to accept that may be a simplistic picture painted of a nuanced sector where there is lots of money and moving parts involved.
But, we are seeing platform flows records being repeatedly broken in the past couple of years, and advisers are asking the question “What does my platform do for me and my clients?” – and increasingly voting with their collective feet.
Main image: post-its, kelly-sikkema–1_RZL8BGBM-unsplash
