Internal Transfers are currently available for GIA products only.

The new Internal Transfers functionality allows advisers to move cash between a client’s GIA products directly within the Novia Global Platform, removing the need for manual workarounds and creating a smoother experience.

In this edition of Pulse we reflect on how platforms and investment strategies are continuing to evolve as we approach the halfway point of the year, shaped by both technological progress and shifting market conditions.

What does your role involve, and how does it support financial advisers day-to-day?
My role centres on ensuring that advisers have the operational structure, technical support and strategic clarity they need to focus on what matters most, their clients. That ranges from improving processes and removing friction points, to supporting regulatory understanding and facilitating access to the right expertise at the right time. Day-to-day, it’s about making advisers’ lives easier, so they can deliver confident, high-quality advice efficiently.

What do you enjoy most about working with advisers?
I genuinely value the professionalism and integrity that characterises so many advisers. The regulatory environment is demanding, and advisers operate at a high technical standard. I enjoy the conversations that go beyond product discussions about good client outcomes, planning and long-term strategy. There’s a real commitment to doing the right thing.

What’s one thing advisers should know to get the most value from working with you?
Engage early and openly. The earlier we’re involved in a challenge or opportunity, the more effectively we can help shape a solution. I see our relationship as a partnership the more context we have about an adviser’s objectives, client and business ambitions, the more tailored and impactful our support can be.

What’s the best piece of professional advice you’ve ever received?
“Rome wasn’t built in a day.”  Whilst a simple phrase, it’s one that has stayed with me throughout my career. In financial services, particularly within a complex and highly regulated environment, meaningful progress rarely happens overnight. Sustainable growth, strong adviser relationships and well-run operations are built deliberately, over time. This has reminded me to stay focused on long-term outcomes and to recognise that continuous, incremental improvement often delivers the most lasting impact.

What’s one thing you think will matter more to advisers in the next 12 months?
Operational efficiency alongside demonstrable client value. With regulatory scrutiny and cost pressures continuing to rise, advisers who can clearly show their value while running lean, well-structured businesses will be best placed to succeed. My focus is to ensure we consistently deliver an efficient, seamless service that makes life easier for advisers, freeing up their time to focus on what really matters, their clients.

What attracted you to financial services originally?
Having spent 15 years working in law supporting the financial services sector, I was keen to make the move into the industry directly, so I could play a more hands-on role in influencing performance and driving positive outcomes for clients. While my legal background gave me strong technical foundations, I wanted to be closer to the point where strategy, advice and client impact come together. Financial services isn’t just about numbers; it’s about helping individuals and families make confident, informed decisions about their future. That combination of analytical thinking, regulatory rigour and genuinely meaningful outcomes appealed to me from the outset and continues to do so today.

What’s the most rewarding part of your job?
Seeing advisers succeed; whether that’s growing their business, navigating a regulatory challenge with confidence, or delivering exceptional outcomes for their clients. Equally rewarding is seeing my team in action behind the scenes, knowing that our service and support play a real part in that success. It’s a reminder that the work we do, even out of the spotlight, makes a tangible difference.

What motivates you outside of targets and deadlines?
Innovation and continuous improvement. I’m a maximiser at heart, naturally curious about how things can work better, whether that’s a process, a relationship, or a strategy. I’m motivated by progress and by finding opportunities to take things from good to great, rather than just ticking boxes or meeting short-term targets.

What’s one thing your colleagues would say you’re known for?
Probably for being pragmatic and solution focused. I approach challenges calmly and constructively, and keep discussions focused on practical next steps.

If you weren’t in financial services, what would you be doing?
Unfortunately, my footballing days are well and truly behind me, so a professional sporting career is off the table, so I would likely have remained in law. My time working in the legal sector was both challenging and rewarding, and it gave me a strong foundation in analytical thinking and structured problem solving. That said, I’m pleased I made the move into financial services, where I’ve been able to combine that background with a more direct influence on business performance and client outcomes.

What’s one thing you’d like advisers reading this to remember about you?
Service comes first. I’m passionate about driving the delivery of excellent service and my role is all about supporting advisers so they can provide the highest-quality outcomes for their clients. I focus on removing friction, streamlining processes, and providing timely guidance; all the behind-the-scenes work that ensures advisers can operate efficiently and confidently.

What’s the best place you’ve ever visited in the UK?
Edinburgh, partly because of my Scottish roots, but also for its incredible heritage and atmosphere. From wandering the historic streets of the Old Town to taking in the views from the castle, it’s a city full of character and history that always feels special every time I visit.

What are you most looking forward to this year?
Strengthening our partnerships with advisers and continuing to refine how we support them. There are significant opportunities ahead, and I’m optimistic about what we can achieve together.

As we continue to navigate the complexities of 2026, we’re excited to welcome you to this latest edition of Pulse. In this issue, we delve into a topic that’s close to our hearts, maintaining simplicity, trust, and value in a world that often thrives on complexity.

Our latest edition of Pulse is now live with this edition reflecting on the continued evolution of the platform market, from the manual, fragmented processes many advisers will remember, to the more integrated and technology enabled environment we see today.

Steve Andrews draws parallels between the evolution of golf and investment platforms, two subjects close to his heart…

Heightened volatility has defined markets for several years now. We might say it has become a “new normal” – one that investors have had little choice but to grudgingly accept – since the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Yet the frequency of the ups and downs has reached another level altogether of late. The term “rollercoaster ride” barely does justice to the rapid-fire succession of peaks and troughs which has unfolded during the past year or so.

The drama arguably began with last April’s Liberation Day announcement on US trade tariffs, which triggered big falls – followed, thankfully, by a reasonably swift recovery. Fluctuating expectations over AI-fuelled disruption then repeatedly sent company valuations seesawing – a phenomenon that continues today.

The geopolitical backdrop in the Middle East has been driving sentiment in near‑real time, with even overnight Truth Social posts acting as a leading indicator for moves across equity and commodity markets.

Naturally, we all recognise that major global and economic developments can weigh heavily on investor sentiment. They can trigger anxiety and, worse, prompt knee‑jerk decisions driven more by concern and confusion than by composure and clear understanding.

So how can an investment platform help against this backdrop? In our view, fundamentally, its role should be to deliver the sort of underlying infrastructure that encourages, supports and facilitates measured and effective responses to a challenging environment.

With this ideal in mind, let’s first briefly explore the issue of infrastructure itself. We can then take a closer look at some of the positives to which it should give rise – specifically, stability, transparency, flexibility and confidence.

Infrastructure

A major hurdle for many platforms is the weight of legacy infrastructure. After years of bolt‑ons, workarounds and acquisitions, they often end up with a patchwork of systems that are progressively less capable of performing as intended.

Stopgap solutions represent a popular “fix”. Unfortunately, they assume technologies from an array of bygone ages can somehow happily coexist, which is seldom the case. At best, the number of clashes and conflicts is likely to be only temporarily reduced by such interventions.

Although the prospect might be painful for some platforms, the best way of maintaining pace with ever-advancing tech is to keep investing and adapting. In effect, it’s essential to concede the job is never done.

Acknowledging this truth is likely to prove both resource-intensive and expensive. It demands commitment, expertise and experience. As a result, partnering with specialist providers can be a major difference-maker in the endless quest for excellence.

Stability and transparency

Within a platform’s broader infrastructure, the processes surrounding investment must be particularly robust. Users require institutional-grade asset protection, strong regulatory oversight and operational resilience – both in the face of increased volatility and when conditions are more benign.

Novia Global aims to achieve this in a number of ways. They include our custody arrangement with Pershing, which is a subsidiary of the Bank of New York Mellon; the segregation of cash and investments; and strict compliance with our regulations.

In tandem, we strive for maximum transparency. It may be hard to believe, but there was a time when most investors were able to learn about their portfolios’ holdings and performance only at quarterly or even half-yearly intervals.

Platforms have been transformative in this regard, enabling “always on” access to information that was once routinely presented only in the form of occasional reports. Not least in the midst of uncertainty, knowing precisely how investments are faring can count for a great deal.

Flexibility and confidence

 The standard advice for investors during periods of turbulence is to stay calm. Stability and transparency can go a long way in this respect. Yet staying calm isn’t the same as doing absolutely nothing – which brings us to the heart of measured and effective responses.

Uncertainty at the macro level may well necessitate prudent adjustments to portfolios. Thanks to platforms, this doesn’t have to be a difficult and time-consuming task.

MPS providers are key here. They can expedite real-time oversight, tactical repositioning, sensible diversification and clear communication – all important considerations when markets seem to pose potentially awkward questions day after day after day.

This kind of flexibility also breeds confidence. Ultimately, this is what investors really want – confidence in the combined ability of platforms, providers and advisers to meet their needs, irrespective of the ever-shifting geopolitical and geoeconomic landscape.

Mark Maplesden is Novia Global’s Principal Representative Officer in Dubai.

Markets are rarely just about headlines.

Volatility, inflation and interest rates are all influencing investor decisions and understanding how these forces interact is critical in today’s unpredictable environment.

We were joined by Scott Goodrum, Investment Director at Canaccord Wealth, as he explored the key themes shaping global markets in early 2026 and what they mean for investors.

In this session, we explored:

• What’s driving current market volatility
• Where inflation expectations are heading
• The outlook for interest rates and central bank policy
• How to position portfolios in uncertain conditions

Scott also introduced IMPS Lite, a practical tool designed to help investors navigate volatility with greater clarity and confidence.

The Oscars represent the pinnacle of self-satisfied awards ceremonies. As such, they’re often best remembered for those occasions when participants don’t completely buy into the prevailing air of mutual back-slapping.

Take Patty Duke. In 1963, having scooped the Best Supporting Actress award for The Miracle Worker, she struck a resounding blow for succinctness and humility by confining her acceptance speech to two words: ‘Thank you’.

Amusingly, some winners don’t even bother to turn up. Woody Allen preferred to honour a standing engagement to play jazz clarinet at a New York bar. Marlon Brando famously sent a Native American Indian in his stead. George C Scott not only stayed away but flat-out refused the Best Actor award for 1971’s Patton, condemning the whole caboodle as ‘a two-hour meat parade’.

I was reminded of these and other noteworthy efforts when Novia Global was recently crowned International Platform of the Year in the 2025 Investment International Awards. How might I mark our latest triumph in suitably memorable style?

On balance, since I’m not a fan of full-blown controversy, I reckon Patty Duke was on the right track. She was happy to accept the acclaim but kept things short and sweet – which is very much what I would do if someone were to ask me why I believe Novia Global took the prize.

The point here is that the way in which providers choose to frame a platform’s appeal – rather like most of the monologues at the Oscars – is nowadays often overlong, overcomplicated and overwhelming. There’s an unfortunate tendency to rattle on and on about stuff that people neither need nor want to hear.

This can result in a damaging failure to ‘articulate the proposition’, as marketing folks say. An excessive focus on baffling details, gratuitous complexities, whizz-bang features and what have you usually leads only to confusion and strictly limited interest.

In tandem, there seems to be a bizarre conviction that target audiences already totally understand a platform’s fundamental attractions and that to dwell on these would therefore be not just unnecessary but downright stupid. In my experience, this thinking is both misguided and counterproductive.

Bearing all of the above in mind, I would sum up the winning ways of Novia Global – and any other truly efficient and effective platform, for that matter – not in two words but in three easy steps.

1. Simplicity

In some shape or form, electronic trading has been available to consumers for at least four decades. By one or two rules of thumb, it might even be said to have existed for more than half a century.

Needless to say, plenty has changed in that time. Online investing was undeniably exciting during its formative years, but a dizzying assortment of providers and portals meant it could also be perplexing and heavily resource-intensive.

Platforms have played a pivotal role in ending that challenging and slightly untamed era. One of their principal functions is to allow investors to hold and access a range of assets and accounts in the same place – and, if required, under the same management and advice. Innovative but proven technology is key to the simple, seamless investment journeys that are now possible.

2. Trust

Ideally, a platform looks after clients’ money, grows it and then gives it back. This might sound a trifle unsophisticated, but it’s really an accurate encapsulation of the long-term process that investors seek in every kind of financial services provider.

Naturally, any such relationship must be founded on trust. Investors are rightly averse to hidden commission, jaw-dropping exit penalties, incomprehensible terms and conditions, illiquid assets and other unwelcome surprises. This is why the best platforms are highly transparent.

By meeting a raft of regulatory requirements – across multiple jurisdictions in Novia Global’s case – platforms foster both clarity and confidence. They bring a measure of certainty to the inherently uncertain task of accumulating and preserving wealth.

3. Value

Historically, the act of engaging with financial services providers has frequently been viewed as unduly expensive. The adviser community in particular knows this problem only too well.

Platforms have helped shatter longstanding perceptions of a broader industry routinely dismissed as costly, exclusive or even pointless. They represent a compelling example of giving consumers what they need – and, indeed, what they should expect – which is a low-cost means of benefiting from the wider world of investment.

Together, the two attributes discussed previously – simplicity and trust – should translate into value, especially when institutional buying power is taken into account. Platforms can now open up a tremendous array of opportunities that were once well beyond the reach of most investors, underlining the genuinely game-changing power of this type of investment vehicle.