Economics of Direct Platforms & Robo-Advice Report (2016)
Publication Date: February, 2016
This report looks at trends in the financial performance and profitability of direct-to-consumer platforms over the last four years. The platforms covered in this report together account for more than 80% of the total AUA in the direct-to-consumer market.
  • D2C Platforms: The report includes comprehensive data on the revenues, profits/losses. yield on assets, profit/loss margin and P&L Account Reserve of 16 D2C platforms.  How do direct platform stack up in terms of financial performance and profitability? How has the unprecedented growth in AUA reflected in the bottom-line of platforms? How have platforms faired from financial performance point of view; and how we poised for poised for the future? The growth in the sector hasn’t been without some casualties, as evidenced by the number of consolidation and withdrawal from the market place. Who are the winners and losers going forward?
  • Robo advice: With changing retail distribution landscape, robo-advice is all the rage right now. We know that discussions are going on in boardrooms and providers/asset managers are wondering if robo-advice is the next big thing, although very few of them are actually queuing up to launch robo-advice propositions. So we thought we’ll do a little bit of poking around into the economics of robo-advice, but as robo advice market is still a bit nascent in the UK, we look at the developments across the pond. We looked at the capital funding, AUM, fee model and estimated revenues of top 10 roboadvisers in the US!