Finance Monthly April 2020 Edition

THE BENEFITS OF WRAP PLATFORMS Many industry commentators regard Hubwise as a ‘FinTech’ business, but the company is a little bit more than just that – it’s also fully regulated in the UK to hold and control client money, which makes the term ‘RegFinTech’ more applicable to Hubwise’s operations. We caught up with the company’s Founder and CEO, Angus Macdonald, to learn about the benefits of investment platforms and the things that make wrap platforms appealing. Angus Macdonald Founder and CEO of Hubwise Securities Limited Can you explain wrap platforms to us? In simple terms, a wrap platform (or investment platform) enables a user with online access to a broad range of tradeable securities and investment wrappers (such as a GIA, ISA or SIPP), combined with the provision of various trade execution, custody and client money safeguarding services. The smarter platforms are also built around an open API model making it simple for a business to share its transactional client data with other systems or platforms, on a one- way or bi-directional basis. A wrap platform can operate on a B2B (business-to-business) basis, where the wrap platform directly serves (and contracts with) other retail investment businesses, such as Financial Advisers (referred to as IFAs) or Discretionary Fund Managers (DFMs); or the wrap platform can operate on a D2C (direct-to-consumer) basis, where it directly serves (and contracts with) retail investors on an execution-only or self-directed basis; and some wrap platforms operate both D2C and B2B propositions. Our Hubwise business only operates on a B2B basis, so we never competewithour customers, and whilst we only launched our platform service in the summer of 2017, we are fortunate to have attracted a strong and growing user community of many of the largest Financial Adviser Groups and Discretionary Fund Managers in the UK. INVESTMENT - WRAP PLATFORMS 52 www.finance-monthly.com