These developments are the first phase of the group's 12-month ‘Platform Programme'.
Designed to provide maximum flexibility for advisers, the new functionality is based on 6 months' work with advisers to understand how adviser charging should work in practice.
- The new withdrawals functionality, being introduced next week, helps advisers maximise the tax efficiency of funding charges by allowing advisers to target specific wrappers and investment funds, as well as automatically calculating the precise amount required.
- Launching in July, the new auto-disinvestment process prioritises disinvestment from cash and unwrapped assets, providing a simple and tax efficient process for funding adviser charges for a wide range of clients.
David Tiller, Standard Life Head of Platform Propositions, said:
"Throughout 2013 we're introducing a series of changes to make Standard Life Wrap easier to use - our enhanced functionality to fund adviser charging is just the first of these. How adviser charging is funded is purely a matter for advisers and their clients, so we want to allow maximum flexibility for advisers to charge in a tax-efficient way that best suits their clients and business. The enhanced withdrawals and auto-disinvestment capability give advisers the choice they've been asking for."
New enhanced withdrawal functionality will allow advisers to:
- Take withdrawals proportionally across a product/tax wrapper or from targeted funds - including cash
- Choose how the withdrawal is calculated
- Set a yearly percentage withdrawal - the platform will calculate the percentage per frequency
- Configure the withdrawal to fund cash - useful for paying client withdrawals, adviser charges (AC) and/or product charges
New tax-efficient auto-disinvestment process aims to provide a tax-efficient approach for the widest range of clients by:
- Prioritising the disinvestment of cash
- Not disinvesting from tax-wrapped investments (except Wrap ISA)
- Proportionately disinvesting across mutual fund holdings to avoid disturbing asset allocation strategies.
The auto-disinvestment functionality will cover any on-going adviser charges funded from Wrap Cash for unwrapped mutual funds, ISA, SIPP, as well as onshore and offshore bonds.
