Standard Life Investment Hub hits £10bn in SMA assets

Standard Life today announces that separately managed accounts (SMAs)* on its Investment Hub have hit £10bn of assets under management (AUM).The SMAs offer a simple, transparent and cost effective way for investors to access multi-asset portfolios, while benefiting from investment expertise from their chosen discretionary fund manager (DFM).

The Investment Hub supports users with discretionary permissions and now has more than 100 DFMs and over 650 adviser firms investing in the DFM portfolios.

Supporting firms to effectively meet their regulatory requirements, the Investment Hub enables firms who use Wrap to efficiently separate their activities into distinct advice and investment functions.

The Investment Hub has an average client portfolio size of £198,000 illustrating the growing trend towards systemised investment solutions and demand for multiple investment strategies.

Jenny Davidson, Head of Platform Investment Proposition commented: “This really is a huge milestone for us with assets on our Investment Hub alone now exceeding a number of traditional platform players in the market. We developed the Hub five years ago as a result of adviser demand and that demand has continued to grow as centralised investment propositions (CIPs) become more important to adviser businesses as they deal with regulatory change and the more complex demands of their clients.

“Investment expertise is a function that many advisers choose to develop within their business, and as they do so, they look to have a clear delineation from the advice service. With drawdown now the first choice for many clients, adviser businesses need to have more than one investment strategy in place. The Investment Hub can support this efficiently and at the scale needed by individual the businesses.”

Tony Allan, Partner/ Head of Business Development, LGT Vestra LLP added: “We have worked in successful partnership with Standard Life since the launch of the Investment Hub five years ago and we have grown together. At launch it was an innovative concept to separate the advice and investment function and it continues to be so with the ability to help us by better understanding both the needs of a discretionary firm, and those of our clients.”

ENDS

*SMAs are sometimes referred to as MPS or Managed Portfolio Services with the names used interchangeably.

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Notes to editors

About Standard Life

• The Standard Life brand is almost 200 years old and today it is focused on being customers’ first choice for their life savings.
• In the UK, Standard Life helps people with their life savings through its Wrap and Elevate platforms which are used by financial advisers to provide financial planning and wealth management services to their clients.
• Standard Life Wrap and Elevate are the only platforms to have achieved an AKG A Financial Strength rating, an Adviser Asset Platinum Rating, a Defaqto 5 Star and Gold Service Ratings.
• Standard Life Wrap won ‘Leading platform for model portfolio services’ as voted for by discretionary managers, at the Schroders Platform Awards September 2019.
• As at 30 June 2019, £59.8 billion of assets are invested across the Standard Life Wrap and Elevate platforms.
• The value of investments can go down as well as up, and could be worth less than original invested. Unless otherwise indicated, information shown is accurate as at October 2019.