One of the characteristics of the financial planning industry in the United Kingdom is its variability.

The interesting thing about these businesses is not their variability in size, or client type or even the way they market their services – it’s the variability of the systems planners use to manage their businesses.

Right now in the UK one of the dominant themes in the industry is consolidation – the inclination for fund managers and financial service providers to wield control over the various distribution networks.

The reason for manufacturers doing this are clear – it gives them better control of the client, it gives them a channel for their new products and it allows them to use their systems to drive down the cost of owning and managing the client.

The challenge for the providers then is not how to finance their purchases – indeed aggregated decade of strong performance from investment markets has left them with deep pockets – but what to buy?

burningpants’ UK research team is aware of two European multinational financial services companies with a few billion in Sterling to potentially spend on acquisitions.

Already the deals are starting to stack up as the providers run their rulers over all the reasonably sized business in the market place.

If you could write the brief for what the providers are looking to buy it would be relatively straightforward – a profitable national network with strong business systems and a good adviser model.

AXA recently acquired the interestingly named Thinc Destini – an advisory business with a national network of 650 advisers, approximately £3 billion under advice and sells in the region of £3 billion of mortgages to customers each year.

Two weeks ago, Friends Provident wrapped up the financial advice service provider Sesame, which has strong relationships with 7,500 advisers for £75 million.

Providers find it very easy to buy businesses which have clear management systems which allow them to understand how much they will make for the business and how they will achieve the growth they need.

In some ways this makes what might be a growing resistance to the idea of wraps and platforms odd – because one of things that a platform does for a business is make it easy to value, easy to scale and therefore easy to buy.

Data coming to burningpants from CoreData Research – the UK arm of the business – suggests that the average mid-tier adviser is starting to lose faith with the idea of wraps and platforms due to a perception they have taken too long to arrive and that platforms are merely a strategy for the fund managers and providers to get control of their clients.