What is an international investment platform?
Think of a platform like an online financial supermarket.
It’s one account where you can hold your shares, funds and even your tax wrappers such as a pension or offshore bond under a single roof.
If you are capable of controlling your emotions and confident you won’t make a mistake, the cheapest options is to do everything yourself (DIY).
Platforms can be a great idea when it comes to managing your finances because they let you choose and hold all types of investments in one place.
Less paperwork. One password. Less hassle.
In the old days, people used to use either an offshore insurance company (probably an offshore bond), a stockbroker (to buy shares), go directly to a fund manager to buy funds and/or use an adviser to get help.
This took a lot of time, was often managed on the phone or via snail mail/fax, and it could mean people had several different accounts for different bits of their savings and investment affairs. This could be expensive, opaque and very frustrating.
Cue the advent of the platform.
These started about 20 years ago in Australia and the US and first hit the UK in about 2002. Now you can go to one single place for most of your investment needs and it makes life a lot easier.