The Morning Briefing: MoneySuperMarket enters investment platform market; HMRC whistleblower scheme
Good morning and welcome to your Morning Briefing for Monday 20 July 2026. To get this in your inbox every morning click here.
MoneySuperMarket enters investment platform market
MoneySuperMarket has entered the investment platform market with the launch of a direct-to-consumer proposition.
The new platform, Investments by MoneySuperMarket, offers customers access to Stocks and Shares Isas and general investment accounts from as little as £1.
Available through the firm’s app, it charges a 0.34% annual platform fee with no trading fees.
HMRC whistleblower scheme could apply to 1,200 tax cases a year
Around 1,200 HM Revenue & Customs investigations each year could qualify for enhanced payments under its new whistleblower reward scheme, according to Pinsent Masons.
Data provided by HMRC to the law firm showed that more than 1,200 investigations last year recovered enough unpaid tax to potentially meet the criteria for the Strengthened Reward Scheme.
Dan Marsh: My half-Christmas wish list for our next chancellor
My friends and I used to celebrate ‘half-Christmas’ every June, writes Dan Marsh, CEO of Octopus Money.
Anyone looking in may have thought we were pretty strange eating turkey in summer with seasonal hats and jumpers on, but I always loved it.
I wonder how our new chancellor might reflect on their own department’s half-Christmas moment, particularly in light of recent Isa changes.
Quote Of The Day
Investors will want to see a reset and reassurance that the economic landscape will remain predictable enough to justify committing capital for the long term
– Susannah Streeter, chief investment strategist at Wealth Club, on the challenges facing new prime minister Andy Burnham
Stat Attack
Research by Adobe Acrobat of 350 UK business owners found that many firms recognise weaknesses in their branding but lack the time, skills or confidence to address them.
The findings also reveal sharp generational and regional differences in how often businesses review their brand identity.
60%
of business leaders do not regularly re-evaluate or refine their branding and design.
15%
do not know how to reassess their branding, while a further 10% are too busy or do not consider it a priority.
18%
identify social media visuals as their biggest branding weakness.
18%
say maintaining consistency across different platforms is their main branding challenge.
5%
consider tone of voice their biggest weakness, suggesting greater confidence in verbal than visual identity.
33%
choose simple branding when developing brand assets, making it the most popular design approach.
25%
prioritise designs that differentiate their business from competitors.
40%
of Gen Z business leaders believe their branding needs significant improvement, compared with 12% of Gen X leaders and 6% of Baby Boomers.
Source: Adobe Acrobat
In Other News
WBR Group has appointed Roger Howman and Jason Wood as trustee consultants to strengthen its Trustee Consultancy Team.
The appointments come amid increased scrutiny of small self-administered schemes from The Pensions Regulator and HMRC, with member trustees facing pressure to understand their responsibilities.
Howman has more than 30 years’ experience in the SSAS and SIPP sector, including director roles at Lindley Trustees and IFG Pensions.
Wood also has more than three decades’ pensions experience and worked at Interactive Investor.
WBR chief operating officer Martin Tilley said their expertise would help advisers and clients navigate legislative changes, including inheritance tax reforms.
Oxford Capital’s original Enterprise Investment Scheme investment in digital wealth platform Moneybox has increased 25-fold in value since it first backed the company in 2016.
Moneybox was valued at £800m this week, up around 45% since 2024, ahead of a £45m secondary share sale for long-serving employees.
Oxford Capital led Moneybox’s seed round with an initial £1.2m investment when the business was pre-revenue and had no customers.
It has since invested in every funding round and remains one of the company’s largest shareholders.
Founder partner David Mott said the investment was “one of the highest-performing investments in recent times” for EIS investors.
Oxford Capital previously sold part of its holding in 2024, generating returns of up to 17 times the original investment.
Moneybox’s share sale will use the London Stock Exchange’s PISCES framework.
The platform serves more than 1.9 million customers and has over £23bn in assets under administration.
From Elsewhere
How Britain’s new prime minister can revive Labour (The Economist)
Thames Water lenders preparing legal challenge in event of Burnham nationalisation (BBC News)
Chief financial officers turn more hopeful about AI (Reuters)
Did You See?
In CP26/23: Consumer Duty – scope and proportionality, published on 29 June 2026, the FCA has set out proposed new rules on co-manufacturing, writes Vanessa Johnson, head of compliance strategy at threesixty services.
fca-building-3The FCA’s approach to co-manufacturing has long generated uncertainty across the advice and investment management market since the term was first coined in 2022.
At the heart of the issue lay a fundamental problem: there was no formal FCA definition of ‘co-manufacturing’.
Instead, the concept evolved through guidance, statements and supervisory activity, leaving firms (and consultants) to piece together the regulator’s expectations from multiple sources.
The FCA’s original position on co-manufacturing was set out in its Finalised Guidance on the Consumer Duty (FG22/5), published in July 2022. At that stage, the emphasis was on the materiality of a firm’s role in the design and delivery of a product or service.
Under this framework, a firm would typically be considered a co-manufacturer where it could “determine or materially influence” key product features – such as pricing, target market or investment strategy.
Working out what constituted a ‘material influence’ required subjective judgement and led to inconsistencies in the marketplace.
