FIS, a provider of financial technology, claims that as it grows in the UK market, it is not excluding the possibility of buying other advisory businesses.
The 2013 acquisition of Platform Securities by the US IT company was made to bring to the UK the successful US business-to-business asset management outsourcing to the UK.
“We haven’t rejected anything or accepted anything. Platform Securities CEO John Beeston told Money Marketing that they would consider it if the perfect chance presented itself to improve the company.
“As a worldwide organisation, we are constantly seeking for businesses to buy. FIS has always been a scale acquirer if you look at it. Wherever we believe it will benefit our clients and us.
Beeston, a wealth and investment industry veteran with over 35 years of expertise, was hired by FIS wealth management last year to spearhead its global expansion.
Portfolio management, record keeping, custody administration, and settlement are just a few of the global wealth management products and services that FIS provides globally.
It also gives businesses access to tax-wrapped goods like Isas, Lisas, and Jisas.
Banks, financial managers, platforms, and consulting companies make up the clientele.
Beeston said that the capacity to assist larger clients with entering overseas markets, whether in the US, UK, or South Africa, is one of our strengths as a global organisation.
By offering a variety of product types to assist businesses in managing technology solutions, Beeston said FIS hopes to become the source of choice for wealth and retirement managers.
The self-invested personal pension (Sipp) servicing was introduced by FIS last month. The tech supplier teamed with that company to help Quai Digital’s entry into the pensions industry; the tech supplier teamed with that company.
He claimed that although FIS is known in the UK as a company that primarily provides technology, it intends to reverse that by repositioning itself as a provider of wealth management solutions.
We have adopted the branding name of wealth and service to communicate better who we are in terms of wealth management services and solutions.
There aren’t many wealth management solutions with a single, comprehensive offering, according to Beeston, who formerly worked for Brewin Dolphin, Schroders, and Fidelity International.
He declared: “Discretionary fund managers have access to some excellent portfolio management tools, and advisors have access to some great financial planning tools. However, they haven’t truly connected all the dots.
As per Beeston, FIS has launched a front-end service called Unity, an aggregator that only uses APIs.
Furthermore, it enables FIS to incorporate many technological solutions and combine them to develop a single client journey.
He claimed that many businesses are turning to outsource as a means of achieving economies of scale.
In his remarks, he mentioned a recent FIS research revealing that “53% of the market is considering, will, or has outsourced to a third party.”
According to Beeston, “many people and businesses have realised that achieving economies of scale with the right partner in the market makes sense.” And you don’t need to invest thousands, if not millions, of pounds on your infrastructure’s backends.
The market has been trending in that direction for a while, but it appears there is greater interest now due to digitisation and Covid, among other things, he continued.
Beeston also disclosed that FIS wants to offer institutional services, trading, settlement, and custodial capabilities for significant pension funds and top-tier institutional trading.
However, he observed that “that’s coming down the line; we are not in that space yet.”
“There aren’t many options available on the market from the UK,” he continued. We see an opportunity because they are pretty constrained to a few companies. Potential customers will be interested in our offering if we can provide funnelling separately from what is currently on the market.
