Hargreaves Lansdown has emerged as the best overall direct to consumer platform in The Platforum’s first direct platform leaderboard.
The Platforum has today launched a research report providing an overview of the D2C market entitled ’Guide to Direct Platforms and investors – a market turned on its head.’
Direct platforms have been ranked based on price, brand strength, and customer service. Other factors used to assess direct platforms include usability, investment choice, content, and the level of guidance available for non-advised clients. (see table below for the full leaderboard)
Source: The Platforum
The Platforum managing director Holly Mackay says: “Hargreaves Lansdown just works well and scores well in every category – other than cost where it is certainly at the top end of the scale for larger portfolios. However the phone is answered by a typically knowledgeable helpful human being within 10 seconds, we get personalised emails and communications and it is just easy to engage with them.”
She adds: “The Platforum holds accounts with all the different platforms tested and has conducted extensive testing over the last six months, looking at service, ease of use, guidance and responsiveness amongst other things. Price is one factor of this analysis which receives all the column inches but is extremely difficult to convey in one neat table.
“The devil is in the detail. Where should an investor go if they have £50,000 in a portfolio? It depends if that is in an Isa or a Sipp, in funds or equities, and how often you trade.”
Completely pointless exercise – comparing apples and oranges and then computing a score which is a composite applicable to no individual investor.
The final quote is all that needs to be said. “The devil is in the detail. Where should an investor go if they have £50,000 in a portfolio? It depends if that is in an Isa or a Sipp, in funds or equities, and how often you trade.”
The idea of “best” overall is a statistical nonsense.