A measured assessment
of the technology
underneath your platform.
Bruntsfield Advisory assesses the technology and operating shape of wealth platforms, brokers, exchanges and advisory firms, and the infrastructure behind them. Every engagement starts with a Workshop and a written Platform Power Report, at no charge. What comes next, if anything, is up to you.
Three questions every platform should be able to answer, and the value they add up to.
Platform Power is the methodology behind everything Advisory does. It is a structured way of understanding a platform: what the business achieves, what defends it, and whether the technology can carry it, distilled into a single headline we call Platform Value.
It is the product of years spent advising on how platforms are built, defended and valued. Every finding is evidenced, every score is explained, and the report tells a board exactly where the value sits and what would unlock more of it.
What does the platform achieve?
The economics as they stand: accounts, revenue, growth, margins, cost to acquire and serve. Hard numbers, grouped and weighted.
What stops a competitor taking it away?
The seven recognised sources of durable advantage, from scale and network effects to switching costs and brand. Each is judged twice: the benefit it delivers, and the barrier that protects it. A benefit with no barrier scores nothing, because it will be copied.
Can the technology carry it?
A deep dive across nine technology modules and fifty-one rated parts, from the core ledger to market connectivity. Each is rated Basic, Developing, Advanced or Frontier against written criteria, and the weakest module sets the ceiling for the whole platform.
So what is it worth doing?
The composite of the three readings: where the platform sits today, where it could sit, and a ranked list of the moves that close the gap, ordered by how much each one shifts the score.
A short, signed document. Scores, bottleneck, prioritised moves.
The excerpt below shows one strand of one section. The full engagement runs far deeper — all nine infrastructure modules and their fifty-one parts, the business and power readings, uncertainty ranges on every score, and a costed, ranked modernisation plan. The free report is the honest summary of what we would find.
“Meridian Securities”, a fictional mid-tier brokerage.
| Infrastructure module | Status | Maturity: today against an Advanced target |
|---|---|---|
| Orchestration | Bottleneck | |
| Order & Execution Management | On watch | |
| Market Data | On watch |
Workshop. Report. A decision about what, if anything, comes next.
A 60-minute Workshop, on us.
A working call with one of our specialists. We listen, we ask about the platform, and we sketch the report we would write. A short written summary follows either way.
A free Platform Power Report.
A short report follows the Workshop: the headline Platform Value score with its range, an assessment of the infrastructure, and the moves we would prioritise. Yours to use as you like.
If, and only if, you want more.
A full Platform Power Diagnostic, a Module Deep Dive, due-diligence support, or a Monitoring retainer. We will say which is the right next step. We will also say if none of them is.
Four shapes of paid engagement.
| Engagement | What to expect |
|---|---|
| Platform Power Diagnostic | The full assessment. A named lead works through the platform with your teams, from documents and dashboards to live demonstrations, so the ratings rest on what we saw, not what we were told. Every module and power rated with the evidence behind it, scenario analysis on the moves that matter, a costed modernisation plan, and a technical appendix your CTO can challenge line by line. |
| Module Deep Dive | One area only, usually the bottleneck the free report surfaced. The same rigour and evidence standards as the Diagnostic, applied narrowly. The right shape when the question is already clear and a full Diagnostic would be over-scope. |
| Due Diligence Support | For acquirers, lenders and investors weighing a target. The same framework applied under deal conditions: a clear-eyed read of the target’s technology, the modernisation cost that should be priced in, and the questions to put to management before signing. |
| Monitoring retainer | A named advisor and a re-scored assessment each quarter: what has moved, what has not, and whether the modernisation programme is doing what was promised. The score history keeps the board honest about progress. |
Asked on most first calls.
Anything not covered here? Ask it on the Workshop, or write to advisory@bruntsfield.capital.
- A short signed document: a headline Platform Value score with its range, the sub-scores beneath it, a heatmap across the nine infrastructure modules, and a prioritised shortlist of moves with rough effort-and-impact bands. Enough to take to a board.
- Every rating carries an evidence grade, from self-reported through to directly observed. On full engagements two assessors rate independently and a committee reviews the strongest claims. And every number is reported as a range, not a point. The report says how sure we are, not just what we think.
- A specialist from our Advisory team. The person on the call is the person who will write the report.
- We would rather show you a real reading of your platform than a slide deck about ourselves. If the report is useful, you will know whether going further is worth it.
- Wealth platforms, retail brokerages, exchanges, distributors, and the infrastructure operators behind them. If your business is not one of these, the methodology may not fit; we will say so on the first call.
- The Workshop runs under NDA. We do not benchmark you against named peers without your permission. The report is yours.
