MM Meets: Alex Cowan-Sanluis, chief executive, Platform One: ‘I like not knowing what’s around the corner’

If there is one thing Alex Cowan-Sanluis does not like, it is being in his comfort zone.

When we meet at The Office Group in Liverpool Street, the Platform One chief executive is animated, clearly enthused about everything we discuss — whether that is travelling to dangerous countries or setting up his own platform company while in his 20s.

It takes me a while to attune my ears to the pace at which he talks, but his lively tone is clearly typical of his personality.

“The first thing to know about me is I am someone who likes changing things. So, whether that’s building businesses or growing them, or trying to disrupt industries, or just going off into the mountains, I’m not a very static individual.

Any firm can come to us and plug in and use our underlying core services

“Therefore I tend to push myself quite hard, both personally and commercially, because I just enjoy being in that zone of discomfort.”

He adds: “The joke in my family is, ‘Alex feels comfortable only when he’s uncomfortable,’ to the point where, as a kid, I wore jeans or school uniform right up until going to bed. I still don’t change today.”

‘Conveyor belt’

Cowan-Sanluis did not set out to work in financial services. He went first to medical school.

“My mother wanted me to be a doctor,” he says. “The problem I had with medicine was not the usual things, like blood and gore; that was fine. I loved dealing with patients and I found it, academically, super-fascinating.

Maybe further down the line we’ll look at things like digital custody

“But I could see the conveyor belt of my career for the next 20 or 30 years; it just freaked me out.

“I like not knowing what’s around the corner. And medicine is quite prescribed in that sense. No pun intended.”

He continues: “I wanted to be in something commercial — something where I could fly or fall in terms of building something.

“You can absolutely do that in the medical world but, typically, it’s not until much later in your career. So not until you’ve been a consultant for a few years, or you’ve got a private practice, and then you can go into research, creating tools or applications, or whatever it may be. I just wanted to get moving. So that’s why I left.”

Cowan-Sanluis then went to business school, before joining American cybersecurity firm IO Active, where he “cut my teeth” on US-centric business behaviour and styles.

“This is very different from the UK in the sense that it’s much faster paced, it’s much more aggressive.

It gave us a seed base of assets with which to start testing some of our grander ideas

“There’s a real focus on commerciality and growth. And it was really interesting being exposed to that in my early 20s.”

While working for IO Active, Cowan-Sanluis helped expand the US business overseas.

“I established the European office, the Middle East office, Asian and African. I spent four years on the road, literally living in hotels.

“It was an incredible and interesting culture clash of US business practices versus Middle Eastern business practices versus Asian business practices versus South African, and so on. I got to see how a plethora of businesses worked and operated in different cultures and different markets.”

In the back of his mind, Cowan-Sanluis always knew he wanted to set up and run his own business.

We used that IFA as a bit of a guinea pig, to see if this tech would change things. And it did

“I also had friends who wanted to do their own thing,” he says. “We all had our respective careers. We cut them short to set out on our own, with no real plan as to how, why or where.

“We started throwing around ideas about what we could do to start our own business. And, of course, like anyone trying to do this, a couple of ideas were rubbish and those didn’t go anywhere.

“We had the naivety of youth and tried to start too many at the same time. Anyone who runs a business knows you have to focus 100% of your attention on that one area. Whatever you think you can hoist on your shoulders at a young age, you just can’t.”

Procurement focus

One of the areas the group of friends wanted to focus on was procurement.

“We wanted to streamline, digitise and automate procurement processes in big industry,” says Cowan-Sanluis.

We had the early semblance of a pure tech company. We were doing tech for advice firms, platforms, brokers, you name it

“I’d been exposed to a lot of big companies, and procurement was just so painful. It was full of old-school clunky systems, and partly digitised new systems that didn’t do anything of value-add. There was no automation. The list went on.

“There are probably quite a few parallels there to the space we are now working in.”

Through procurement, the team got to understand a lot about financial services as well as the energy sector, the car industry and manufacturing.

“A lot of industries share the same problems and difficulties even though the verticals are different.”

Although the procurement business did not go anywhere, the group had, by this point, built a lot of technology to help streamline and automate processes.

I got to see how a plethora of businesses worked and operated in different cultures and different markets

“The core of those can be applied to anything,” says Cowan-Sanluis. “A lot of my mates who I had gone to university with had gone into financial services, so we started playing around with algorithmic trading [algo trading] because it sounded really cool at the time.”

Seeds are sown

The two businesses — procurement and algo trading — ended up becoming what Platform One is today, in what Cowan-Sanluis describes as a “really roundabout, completely unintentional way”.

He says: “The algo trading was great. We launched a fund, and we got capital into that fund. It was quite successful, it produced returns. Looking back, I really don’t think we had a huge idea of what we were doing, but we were pushing it.

“It was through that fund and raising capital we got to understand the capital flows, where they were coming from — and part of that was independent financial advisers. We learned about IFAs, wealth managers and discretionary fund managers.

We had the naivety of youth and tried to start too many ideas at the same time

“When we had conversations with them, we realised we were hearing the same grumbles about ‘platforms’ as we had heard in procurement or any other sector. Again, in the naivety of youth, we thought, ‘Well, we’ll just build a platform — because, why not?’”

A lot of the core technology they had built for the automation of procurement processes was fully translatable to the wealth management space. So Cowan-Sanluis and his colleagues took a lot of that code, re-engineered it and applied it to the platform, initially to make things easier for their fund.

“We soon realised we’d struck upon something quite interesting,” he says. “We started learning more about our peers in the industry — the big, ginormous ones and the smaller, challenger ones.”

The procurement business swiftly fell to one side. The friends ended up selling their fund and focused exclusively on the platform business, which they called Kodin.

“It was a really messy but organic way of going about it. We had the early semblance of a pure tech company. We were doing tech for advice firms, platforms, brokers, you name it — anything in the wealth sector. And then we came across a pre-existing business called Platform One.”

I’d been exposed to a lot of big companies, and procurement was just so painful. It was full of old-school clunky systems

Platform One had been founded in 2011 by a couple of ex-Ascentric colleagues, one of whom was Clive Boothman — co-founder of Ascentric and chair when it was sold to Royal London in 2014. The Ascentric platform changed hands again on 1 September 2020 when M&G acquired it from Royal London.

“These guys had been in the industry a while. They really knew what they were doing,” says Cowan-Sanluis.

“We came across them in late 2017 through an IFA we were selling tech services to. The IFA said, ‘You guys need to take a look at this platform.’

“Being brutally honest, Platform One hadn’t really gone anywhere from 2011 through to early 2018, despite amassing £200m of assets.

“The guys had a good concept of what a platform should be but one of the issues they had was they were a white label of Ascentric.

We wanted to streamline, digitise and automate procurement processes in big industry

“This is no discredit to Ascentric. It was a great business and still is as M&G Wealth. But you just don’t have control [as a white label].

“When you don’t have control, especially in the early days, it’s hard to amass clients because you’ve got to convince those first IFAs to be the first users on the platform.

“In the first few weeks and months of engagement with those IFAs, if you can’t tweak things and fix problems quickly, you will lose reputation. And that’s what had happened.

“So this IFA said, ‘Look, I’ve got some assets with this platform. Maybe you guys can be the last hurrah, give it a whirl, license your tech and see what happens.’”

In March 2018, Cowan-Sanluis drove down to the Platform One office in Ferndown near Bournemouth — where the firm’s headquarters still are today — and signed the licence agreement.

We realised we were hearing the same grumbles about ‘platforms’ as we had heard in procurement or any other sector

“We used that IFA as a bit of a guinea pig, to see if this tech would change things. And it did.  Barriers to entry for assets to come on reduced dramatically. The IFA started putting assets on; they loved it. We worked with them, which is core to how we operate.”

Job offer

The board of Platform One asked Cowan-Sanluis if he would take over as CEO to run the business. He was keen but insisted this needed to be more than just a role.

“We wanted to merge properly as group shareholders,” he says. “It was a good marriage of IP [intellectual property] and permissions. What it also gave us was a seed base of assets with which to start testing some of our grander ideas and some of the other things we had in the toolbox from a tech perspective, because we were more than just platform tech.”

Cowan-Sanluis took over as CEO on 1 January 2019 and the “real growth story” has happened since then.

I wanted to be in something commercial — something where I could fly or fall in terms of building something

“Those things came together and allowed us to be a challenger against the rest of the industry. From 2019 through to today has been a rapid growth trajectory.

“To go from [a company looking after] a couple of hundred million pounds to one in charge of over £2bn; from seven or eight people to over 50; from burning cash to cashflow positive to breakeven to profitable — these are big swings as a business. It’s been a really exciting journey.”

Now, Cowan-Sanluis has big plans for the company, most of which he wants to keep under wraps for the time being.

Earlier this year, Platform One bought Gaudi Trustees and the operation of more than £1bn of Sipp assets administered by Gaudi Limited. As a result of the deal, Platform One’s assets under administration will rise to £2.7bn.

The acquisition will bring Sipp “technical and administrative expertise” to Platform One, which it will use to launch its own on-platform Sipp, he says.

A lot of industries share the same problems and difficulties even though the verticals are different

“The number-one priority is to ensure we build this full plug-and-play, almost self-service style infrastructure provider to the wealth sector. Any firm can come to us today and plug in and use our underlying core services. And that is sort of the Nirvana.”

The other focus for Platform One is to ensure it provides “all of the services it needs to”, he adds.

“Maybe further down the line we’ll look at things like digital custody. It’s just a case of keeping tacking on to the core services the platform should provide.”

One thing is certain: Cowan-Sanluis will not be sitting still in his comfort zone.

This article featured in the October 2023 edition of MM. 

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