Hargreaves Lansdown has grabbed headlines for all the wrong reasons over the past year. The funds supermarket, which long promoted Neil Woodford, came under fire when his Equity Income fund was suspended and then liquidated, hitting hundreds of thousands of investors.
While Hargreaves grapples with the fallout, lesser-known rivals are storming ahead. IntegraFin is a case in point: its shares have risen by more than a third over the past year to 479p. The funds site, which listed two years ago at 196p, valuing it at £650m, has seen its market worth swell to about £1.6bn.
Unlike Hargreaves, IntegraFin does not offer funds or investment products direct to individuals. Instead, it provides them to financial advisers through its Transact brand, serving as a halfway house.