Plum Software was bought several years ago by Praemium and transferred to Morningstar at the beginning of last year as part of the acquisition of the non-Australian Praemium assets. Plum has now been fully replaced by Wealthcraft, of which more later.
Historically, SSP Worldwide was also a significant player in the practice management market, having supported such key players as SJP and Royal Bank of Scotland. In recent years, the company appears to have been far more focused on the general insurance market which, to be fair, is where the company originated from. The business was bought by Constellation Software in Canada as part of their Volaris Group, who buy to hold software companies and make them successful. Given SSP is one of the largest of the 15 companies in that group, I’m surprised not much has been seen from them.
Focus Solutions have specialised in producing highly innovative software for some of the largest adviser firms like Skipton Building Society, NFU Mutual, and Santander. They have spent the past few years on a major investment in their system including a move to the cloud and modularising their services. Much of their transformation will be made available to a far wider sector of the adviser market than in the coming year so I am putting them firmly in the “watch this space” list for 2024.
In the past couple of years two systems that have originated in the mortgage market are now making a big push into the wealth market. 360DotNet have grown a significant position in the mortgage practice management market over the past decade and have always had aspirations in the wealth market. Their recent capital raise, including a significant increase in the percentage of the business owned by Quilter, is an important key indicator of a positive future.
Also Twenty7Tec, who over the last few years have established a very strong position in the mortgage sourcing market, last year acquired Bluecoat Software and their Finplan system in addition to the Meet Parker Digital and AI platform, which has been relabelled Communicate, and the Broker Sense affordability platform they bought last year.
The key point here is each of these businesses are successful in the mortgage market and are therefore well placed to grow solutions in the wealth market. The reality of advice technology is that I have never seen anyone build a system that from day one treats the needs of wealth and mortgage practice management/CRM equally. To be fair this is hardly surprising. One firm I know who recently completed building the complete entry and wealth journey in the US estimate it’s taken them seven years. If you are buying core technology for your business, it is really important to understand the financial strength of the supplier. It’s great to see new players entering, but do they have the financial resources to see it through?
