Under the new regime - which will start on 6 April 2014 - commission and rebates will be banned and platforms will have to charge investors for their services.
So investors should be able to judge better whether a platform or discount broker offers value for money. Unfortunately, the Financial Conduct Authority has been conservative with the full implementation date, leaving room for confusion among many existing investors for another three years - until April 2016.
The new regime won't necessarily give a clearer idea of whether commercial considerations influence the funds and 'favourite' fund lists promoted by some of these companies. The FCA has confirmed that platforms and discount brokers may continue to receive advertising fees from fund managers, which is a potential source of bias.
Take the example of Hargreaves Lansdown, the most powerful investment platform in the country holding £20.9bn in funds on behalf of investors. Its website gets 34m hits a year. So if it recommends a fund, there are massive inflows.
The company has started a tender process for funds business under the new platform regime and chief executive Ian Gorham this week said that he will be negotiating hard with fund groups to get better deals on funds - and is hoping to achieve an extra one or two basis points off the standard 0.75 per cent annual charge on commission-free funds.
But will a place on Hargreaves' select list of recommended funds - the Wealth 150 - form part of these negotiations?
The following is taken from Hargreaves Lansdown site:
"The Wealth 150 is a list of our favourite funds for new investment in the main sectors. It is the product of rigorous mathematical analysis, combined with thousands of hours of interviews with leading fund managers, to ensure we only bring the very best funds to our clients' attention.
"If a fund is not within our Wealth 150 this is not necessarily a recommendation to sell. However, if you're thinking of adding to your investments we believe these are superior alternatives."
When challenged, Hargreaves defends the impartiality of its list but can offer no proof. So investors cannot rule out that investment analysis might not be the only factor determining which funds will be included. At a briefing this week Mr Gorman said: "One element of the Wealth 150 will be the price fund management groups offer".
So let's take a close look at the Wealth 150. It's not actually a Wealth 150 at all.
Today, it is just 98 funds. That is a big drop in fund numbers over a relatively short period of time. So what is going on?
Mr Gorman says that Hargreaves is considering adding another tier to its fund recommendations - a subset of the Wealth 150 that could be called 'core funds'. Criteria for inclusion will be the ability to "provide the chance of good returns in future and one of the contributors to returns is price". "If a fund manager is willing to reduce the cost it would improve their chances of inclusion," he says.
Investors need to scrutinise select lists carefully for asset allocation biases or the inclusion of poorly-performing funds.
Property funds are notably absent from Hargreaves Lansdown's list, despite property being a key asset class for investors.
Hargreaves recommends one China fund, yet eight Europe ex UK funds. And what is that China fund? Jupiter China, which has been listed for the second time among rival platform Bestinvest's Spot the Dog list of underperforming funds. When we spoke to the Jupiter China's fund manager, Philip Ehrmann, in February he blamed the fund's poor performance on political uncertainty in 2012, which he claims "muddied the waters for investors".
But until Hargreaves and other platforms open up their data on the deals done with the providers of funds that appear on their select lists to scrutiny, then there is no proof of independent selection.
Without this proof customers may doubt the integrity behind the promotion of particular funds.
