History is made by, and yet rarely records, the work of the unsung heroes.
So it is fitting that this year, as Covid-19 impacts the country, that a spotlight has illuminated the dedication of those working tirelessly to revive not just the health of the nation but also the strength of the economy. It is also timely that Alan Turin, the World War Two codebreaker of Bletchley Park, for so long overlooked, is honoured on the new £50 bank note.
At True Potential we also salute our unsung heroes as we celebrate ten years of our platform.
“Platform” is something of a nebulous term but in brief it describes our electronic backbone, the system and database that lies at the heart of the company supporting and enabling all of its functions.
Think of it as the electrics and plumbing of a building. You take it for granted. If it works you don’t think about it. If it doesn’t it’s all you think about.
As time goes by it has to be renewed. As the building changes it has to be extended and made fit for the future. Any significant modification threatens major disruption to all concerned.
You don’t want to hear about it, and you don’t. Because it works. It works well.
Even within the realms of financial literature platform analysis represents a specialist subject.
However, like everything else in our industry, platform efficiency is scrutinised and evaluated using a diverse range of criteria and we’re delighted to report that at the City of London Wealth Management Awards we received Best Fund Platform for the second year running and were awarded a 98% score (the highest on record) from NextWealth for our adoption of digital technology.
In a recent paper on platforms in the investment industry the Lang Cat survey reflected that “True Potential’s scores are the highest ever achieved on any measure across our surveys.
Why so good? Well True Potential was always built with remote tech in mind [and] hasn’t had problems moving to home working.”
Our nerve centre was built to be future proof and has proved to be so. In terms of the heavy lifting our platform is required to perform, it currently holds 413,000 accounts for over 314,000 clients. From a standing start ten years ago assets on the platform have grown exponentially and now approach £16bn. Of this sum just under £13bn is directly under our control in the True Potential Portfolios.
Actively managed to ensure the risk rating of the Portfolios continues to reflect each client’s selected risk profile, a typical monthly rebalancing across the platform can impact 150,000 client accounts and generate over £200m of instantaneous trade instructions made possible by our custom built in house platform technology.
The end of the tax year is, unsurprisingly, the busiest time of year as clients and advisers work to utilise ISA allowances and optimise pension contributions.
In March alone £575m of new cash was received and invested; 22,000 emails, pipelines or secure messages were received from clients and 500,000 individual client account payments were allocated.
This year the impact of Covid-19 lockdown restrictions meant that many people had additional savings to invest. Whether it was forgoing the lure of an expensive latte on the way to work, doing without a quick drink in the pub on the way home or maybe a lockdown resolution to quit smoking, our impulseSave feature was used more than ever.
ImpulseSave allows for contributions from as low as £1 to be made via a smart phone, tablet or computer making it quick and easy for small amounts to be invested with a view to growing over the long-term. ImpulseSave remains the first of its kind and is unique to True Potential. It has grown steadily in use and in the first three months of the year £76m was invested with £40m of this coming through just in March.
< Back to Blog