The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) sent out a 14 section strong request for information to some advice firms as part of its platform market study, Professional Adviser can reveal.
The spreadsheet questionnaire, which has been seen by PA, included 10 sections of questions and a further four for data on adviser charges in the three and a half years up to the end of 2017 H1.
The sections included questions on the firm's platform choices, its ratings of those platforms, functionality used and why, data on switching and charges, and use of discretionary fund managers through platforms.
The watchdog asked advisers to rank how satisfactory each platform's functionality is, such as risk profilers, retirement modelling, capital gains tax calculators and more. The regulator wanted to know how useful each piece of functionality is to advisers and, separately, how it benefits clients.
FCA Looks At 'New Golf Days' In Platform Market Study
It also asked advisers to rate things such as: how easy and intuitive each platform is to use, how clear and understandable charges are, how each platform makes client relationship management easier, how good the direct client experience and more. It wanted answers to these kinds of questions on a scale of one to five - with one being ‘very poor' and five being ‘very good'.
It also asked for the proportion of advisers in a firm who changed their main platform in each of the 2014, ‘15 and ‘16 calendar years.
The next stage of the FCA's platform market study - an interim report - is set to be published in the summer.
