Ascentric Wrap and Ascentric Pension Account (APA) goes from strength to strength with Dunstan Thomas Imago Administration

Background

The Ascentric Wrap platform, first launched in April 2007, has established itself as the leading whole of market wrap platform. From the beginning Ascentric’s strategy was to lead the wrap platform market by providing what IFAs wanted on the Ascentric platform faster than competitor platforms. To achieve this speed to market while maintaining a high quality service Ascentric built strong partnerships with fund managers, product providers as well as its primary customers – some 2,800 IFA clients. Its white labelling operation IFDL also provides tailorable versions of the Ascentric Wrap to very large financial advice firms including Intrinsic, Chartwell and Succession.

Ascentric Wrap geared to provide RDR-ready transparency

A key attribute to attracting advisers to the Asentric Wrap has been in its commitment to deliver RDR compliancy as early as possible. The Ascentric Wrap’s capability to show the fees of all parties involved in a transaction totally transparently has also been a strong attraction. Users can see precisely what the manager, platform, provider and IFA are taking in charges and fees on each transaction. Rebates passed from the fund manager to the platform (for administration and custody of those assets) are passed straight onto the adviser and sit in the wrap account to be drawn down to pay adviser and platform fees.

It is this transparency, now demanded by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) as part of the upcoming Retail Distribution Review (RDR), which sets Ascentric apart from competitor offerings.

Market responsiveness

One key to its success has been its responsiveness to market demands and regulatory changes. If an IFA wants a specific asset or tax wrapper to be represented on the Ascentric platform, following its own vetting procedures to ensure the request does not fall outside the FSA’s list of permissible pensionable assets, the change will be incorporated very rapidly.

Today the wrap has a wide range of SIPP, SSAS, onshore and offshore bond as well as QROPS providers represented. And the figures clearly show the success of the strategy. In a little over four years, Ascentric has taken in a total of £2.89 billion of assets under administration (AUM). Just in the last year it secured additional AUM of £1.2 billion from new business as the attraction of the platform gains momentum.

Ascentric Pension Account supported by Dunstan Thomas Imago

Ascentric’s success comes in no small part to its own SIPP called the Ascentric Pension Account or APA. The APA, which was first launched in May 2009, is a highly flexible and popular SIPP which now takes in more than two thirds of all assets moving onto the Ascentric wrap each year. The APA is underpinned by Dunstan Thomas Imago Administration which provides key parts of its administrative capability including Imago’s workflow functionality which enables compliant processes around pre, at and post retirement events.

Selecting the admin platform for the APA – Dunstan Thomas Imago Administration.

Dunstan Thomas Imago Administration is a highly configurable pension administration platform designed to handle the most complicated SIPP, SSAS, group schemes as well as personal pensions. First developed more than 5 years ago, it can be configured to administer all Accounting procedures, as well as Arrangements, Banking, Business Transactions, Contributions, CRM, Document Management, Drawdown, Expectation, Fees, Investment and Asset, New Business, Payments, Payroll, Policy Management, Refunds, Reversals and Transfers In.

One attraction of Imago for Ascentric is its modular nature. Ascentric already has its own investment technology platform so it was only looking for functionality specific to pensions to support its new SIPP - the Ascentric Pension Account.

Ascentric's Head of SIPP Administration explained why Dunstan Thomas was selected to support administration of the APA: “Dunstan Thomas won out against 10 other competitor systems because of the comprehensiveness of its pensions administration capability, combined with the company’s clear market knowledge and technological flexibility."

“They did not mind that we chose to only use a few key pieces of Imago functionality initially. We have primarily used Imago’s Transfers In and Workflow modules as well as payroll administration more recently. Importantly, Imago offers the flexibility to integrate tightly with our own investment platform as well as with its own Imago Front Office Illustrations module to ensure that we can create illustrations for our clients that are fully compliant with new Disclosure rules.”

Partnership deepens between Ascentric and Dunstan Thomas

Dunstan Thomas was engaged in December 2009 to handle specific areas of administrative processes for the APA.

Ascentric's Head of SIPP Administration again: “We needed a partner that understood our business, had deep pensions administration expertise, and had the functionality we were looking for. The fact that Dunstan Thomas Imago is a highly configurable, modular system built on the very latest XML and web services architecture and has a Microsoft Office look and feel, leant itself to easy adoption by users and provided reassurance that integration with other in-house systems would not be a problem." Time to market was key as launch target for the APA in Quarter 2, 2009 was aggressive. Dunstan Thomas offered all the major pensions administrative process functionality which Ascentric needed.

“Dunstan Thomas and Ascentric worked well together from the beginning. They provide us with regular updates on Imago developments as well as market and regulatory changes likely to affect the system in the coming months."

“They also have proven to be highly pragmatic about what could be done before and what could wait until after launch. On Day One we had to be able to handle Transfers In compliantly and swiftly, as well as handle some of the more common at-retirement events. Dunstan Thomas in-built validation tool, which came inside the Imago Workflow module, proved vital for bringing large volumes of clients into the wrap and onto the APA from launch. The fact that Imago offered Transfers In and strong workflow management enabled us to get to market with confidence much faster than would have been possible otherwise.”

Ascentric Pension Account – in more detail

Ascentric Pension Account has been a great success. Ascentric's Head of SIPP Administration led the project to launch the APA from her arrival from PPML in July 2008. Key to the APA’s success was differentiating it from other pension products already on platform. One way to do this was excluding commercial property which was a popular asset class for most SIPPs already in the Ascentric Wrap.

Ascentric's Head of SIPP Administration explained the APA’s proposition: “We asked the IFA market what they were looking for from us. It was clear they wanted a platform-based SIPP capable of holding ISAs, GIAs and Bonds - all administered in one place. They also did not want a third party involved which only delayed the movement of money from client to the pension. The APA is therefore one of the simplest SIPPs out there in the market.” IFAs can view the details of any client’s APA and receive instant valuations on the pension through Ascentric’s own investment platform. Ascentric’s position as custodian as well as administrator means that valuations can be fed instantly and accurately to the IFA and direct to the policyholder, something that had been impossible with other SIPP administration systems up to now.

It is also clear that the APA is benefiting from an increase of people approaching retirement consolidating pensionable assets onto the Ascentric wrap. Wide scale migration, mostly from traditional life offices’ personal pension plans, is being further stimulated by the demands of the RDR which place an increasing burden of professional training and regulation on IFAs.

This impending pressure is forcing IFA firms to plan their strategies for operating profitably in the post RDR world. When they look at this in detail they realise that in order to thrive from 2013, each of their Registered Individuals are going to have to be more productive. What better way to be more productive than to transfer a good deal of the product sourcing and administrative activity onto the platform provider to create efficiencies?

In an online environment it is even possible to plan a strategy which enables clients to self-serve, or at least weigh up investment options using planning tools on the platform. Further to this, IFA firm owners that are looking to sell their businesses know that business valuations are no longer based on a multiple of initial commissions. Post RDR (and already today in reality) firms will need to provide transparency based on multiples of recurring income streams which, if pre-migrated onto one or two specific platforms, are very easy to demonstrate in real-time. The online wrap platform revolution puts real transparency around an IFA firm’s real and sustainable income streams.

Extending the usage of Imago to payroll

Ascentric is also now working in partnership with Dunstan Thomas to help streamline the administration of payroll so that pension contributions can be taken from multiple pension arrangements and correctly attribute income and PAYE deductions and rebates to each arrangement. Imago handles payments to clients and the Inland Revenue, updating system accounts and tracking vested and non-vested fund values. Payroll administration is a complicated area but working in partnership with Dunstan Thomas Ascentric is already able to handle more than 120 customers in two payroll runs each month. Ascentric also finds Imago’s workflow capability invaluable in validating the right information is being captured on the system at the right time. This is particularly important as large books of clients are migrated over to Ascentric and to the APA.

Dunstan Thomas’ focus on service supports technology partnership.

Ascentric has been impressed by Dunstan Thomas proactivity, particularly associated with making and then communicating system changes associated with the 2011 Finance Bill, to ensure compliance post April 6th and once the Finance Bill passes into law later in the summer.

Ascentric's Head of SIPP Administration explained the value of this proactivity from Dunstan Thomas: “When these changes were announced back in December 2010 Dunstan Thomas issued notification of Imago system changes that were then ongoing as a result of predicted pensions reforms – including the termination of ASPs and the need to set up capped or flexible drawdown facilities as these changes come into effect.”

“To have a technology provider who is advising us on the implications of future regulation and reforms was a breath of fresh air for me. Instead of having to chase them armed with details of various pensions reforms and ask the question ‘How is your system going to accommodate these changes?’, we found that Dunstan Thomas had analysed the implications of the changes and made their systems ready within weeks of the changes being unveiled. This enabled us to accelerate new proposition development safe in the knowledge that Imago would be capable of handling administration around new calculations such as the new Annual Allowance and post-retirement transfers associated with ASP policy migration to new capped drawdown arrangements.” Ascentric is also using Dunstan Thomas’ Imago Front Office Illustrations tool to ensure that they issue fully compliant illustrations as funds move onto the Ascentric Wrap and into the Ascentric Pension Account. New rules demand that the impact of all charges is presented in a fully transparent manner in the effective deductions section of any pensions illustration. Again Dunstan Thomas moved early to support this functionality within its illustration engine.

Imago’s Administration workflow capability is particularly important during a routine review because it prevents users from flicking over key processes which reveal key information and are needed for compliance and accurate record-keeping. For example if current levels of monthly payment and desired income in retirement are out of line, the Imago system will calculate the shortfall and request that some action is taken to inform the customer of this, before allowing the user to proceed to the next stage. Ignoring the completion and validation of key information is simply not an option using Imago Administration.

A glimpse into the future

Imago’s link to Ascentric’s own investment system Blue Button, is likely to follow as more and more administrative processes are handled via Blue Button supported by feeds running in from Imago. Contributions for example are currently double-entered on both the Blue Button and Imago systems. In the future these will only need to be entered in one system.

Ascentric's Head of SIPP Administration explains further: “We have used Imago to help augment our administrative processes and have found it delivers exactly what we anticipated. Imago is a pension lifecycle system geared to underpin any potential process in the pre-, at- and post retirement phases from Transfers In all the way through to vesting events like divorce, triviality and death. We are discovering new functionality areas within Imago all the time. For example we could use Imago’s Document Management to support client reviews and bulk mailings associated with communicating the implications of new rules coming out of upcoming legislative or regulatory changes." Ascentric is also planning to offer ORIGO’s Online Pensions Transfer Service within the APA to allow clients to transfer money between providers much faster and may use Imago to help automate this activity. Automatic sending of tax return data to and from HMRC out of pensions policies can also be potentially carried out via Imago.