It’s five years since Octopus, the £multi-billion group on a mission to invest in the people, ideas and industries that will change the world, acquired Seccl. Since then, we’ve transformed from wealthtech start-up into what we think is the fastest-growing custodian and investment technology provider in the industry today.
Along the way, we’ve reached some major milestones: becoming one of the UK’s first fully digital pension providers, achieving B Corp certification, and now powering the portfolios of over 190,000 customers, for some of the UK’s most innovative companies. It’s a long way from our early days in co-founder Dave Harvey’s garden shed (or garden office as he’d rather it be known).
Join us as we take a look back at some of the key moments that have defined our journey…
How it started …
It’s September 2019, while still pre-market, Seccl was bought by Octopus as part of a £10 million deal. It’s a partnership that would bring together two companies with one shared ambition – to fundamentally change the investment industry, for the better. And it couldn’t come soon enough. Then – as now – the limitations of legacy systems were holding our market back, creating frustrating, over-priced experiences for planners and clients alike.
With Octopus’s backing, our API-first approach was poised to radically disrupt the market; empowering firms of all shapes and sizes to cost-effectively launch and manage future-proofed investment propositions directly on Seccl infrastructure.
And the opportunity was huge – as Simon Rogerson, Octopus co-founder and chief executive, explains: “When we saw the scale of the opportunity with Seccl, we realised, right from the very beginning that this was a long-term commitment. If we spend £100 million building Seccl into the business that I thought was possible then, that would be the right thing to do. I don’t want to build Seccl to sell it, I want to build Seccl to transform an entire industry.”
How it’s going …
Fast-forward five years and our 13-person, Bath-based business has grown to become a 145-strong team of seasoned Secclers. In August 2020 we moved into our Manvers Street HQ in Bath and offices in Edinburgh and London followed. In April 2022, Nucleus co-founder, David Ferguson took over the helm as CEO with a focus on steering our future technology and product direction. Later that year, we became one of the first fully digital pension providers in the UK with the launch of our accumulation pension after just six months of build time (we reached over half a £billion in assets within nine months). This was swiftly followed by a fully automated decumulation pension in July 2023.
Today, we power the investments of 190,000 customers on behalf of some of the most innovative investment platforms in the UK, with our assets under administration growing 125% year-on-year.
This includes medium-to-large advice firms like Cooper Parry, new and growing consolidators like Söderberg & Partners, digital investment managers and advice-tech providers like Timeline and P1, and app-based direct-to-consumer offerings like GoHenry, Chip and Penfold.
Some use Seccl to take control of their own digital experience – creating adviser and client journeys that are more integrated, efficient and affordable than ever. Others – like Timeline, P1, Marlborough and JustFA – are transforming the platform experience for the whole market – delivering ‘off-the-shelf’ adviser platforms that are paperless, easy-to-use and often dramatically cheaper than incumbent alternatives.
And we continue to push the boundaries to deliver market-leading levels of automation and efficiency, with deep integrations with best-in-class solutions like Plannr and moneyinfo that meet advisors where they work, for a more streamlined, connected approach.
It’s all made possible by our API architecture and single instance code base, which has allowed us to develop new features or change existing ones more quickly and cost-effectively than our competitors. To give a sense of the speed and volume of our engineering progress, we deployed 1,007 times in 2023 – with zero downtime.
And what of our relationship with Octopus? Well, that’s gone from strength to strength as Octopus co-founder and chief exec Simon Rogerson and Octopus Money CEO Ruth Handcock explain above. In March this year, Octopus increased its stake, as our co-founders Dave Harvey and Hugo Thorman stepped away from the business. And, in July we proudly achieved B Corp certification, joining our parent company and marking a significant milestone in our five-year journey as part of the Octopus family.
What’s still to come?
There’s no doubt we’re at a pivotal point in the evolution of the platform industry. From old to new. From analogue to digital. From closed, disconnected ‘egosystems’ to genuinely open, infinitely connected ecosystems. It’s not about shaving a few basis points off the costs of a platform. It’s about creating huge efficiency gains across the entire advice journey – massively driving down costs end-to-end, while transforming the overall adviser and client experience for the better. This is the new normal. And we’re excited to power it.
We’ll leave the final word with David Ferguson, our CEO: “When Octopus first bought Seccl, platform technology hadn’t changed for 10 years – a lot’s happened since then, but a lot still needs to change. Having a shareholder with not only a long-term view but also the same level of ambition has allowed us to grow and innovate far faster than we could on our own. Together, we’ve made great strides but we’re just getting started. The opportunity’s huge and I’m excited about what the next five years will bring.”