Leading pensions fintech Dunstan Thomas has secured a 10 year contract to continue to run Spire Platform Solutions’ (SPS) New Business ‘Quote and Apply’ service. It also provides a unique administration layer enabling advisers to purchase innovative retirement income products, including Secure Lifetime Income (SLI) within platform SIPPs.
Dunstan Thomas’ Third Party Administration (TPA) will provide all back office administration for SLI which is a flexible annuity and drawdown hybrid guaranteed retirement income product. SLI was developed in partnership with Just Group and Novia Financial plc (since renamed Wealthtime), during 2018-2019. SLI offers the certainty of a guaranteed income inside the flexibility of a SIPP. In doing so, it addresses the inflexibility of traditional annuities, while delivering a guaranteed income until death. SLI is only available on an advised basis.
Dunstan Thomas built much of the underlying technology to enable this product to be offered on platforms and the SLI was initially launched on the Novia platform.
Andrew Martin, Chief Commercial Officer at Dunstan Thomas added:
“The SLI’s Quote and Apply service that was developed in partnership with Just and Spire Platform Solutions, enables advisers to run highly customised, fully underwritten guaranteed income quotes from participating product providers on several platforms. “As more product providers join the market for SLI quotes, the proposition becomes of interest to more platforms. So, we’d expect the volumes of SLI business that Dunstan Thomas will administer to rise significantly.”
Dunstan Thomas facilitate SLI on 7IM’s innovative Retirement Income Solution (RIS), which was designed to help advisers make investment selections with a view to optimising their customers’ retirement incomes, while mitigating risks to that income. The Secure Lifetime Income product was developed by joint venture partner of Dunstan Thomas, Spire Platform Solutions.
The technology has been designed for use by advisers and their clients. The technology behind it uses the latest Microsoft stack of technologies and uses components from Dunstan Thomas including Integro CX, Imago Administration and Imago Illustrations – leveraging the experience of software already in wide use within the 7IM RIS platform.
In May 2022, 7IM partnered with Just Group and Spire Platform Solutions to offer Secure Lifetime Income solution to users on 7IM's platform. The solution sits within the 7IM SIPP and can be accessed via 7IM's platform, enabling advisers to offer a guaranteed income-producing asset alongside existing drawdown arrangements and other investment strategies for their clients.
This enabled advisers to easily incorporate an element of guaranteed income for life alongside clients’ chosen investment strategies in order to produce a more sustainable, yet flexible, retirement income for all clients.
The technology behind the SLI key components from Dunstan Thomas including its Integro CX, Imago Administration and Imago Illustrations solutions – leveraging the software already in wide use by platforms and providers.
The retirement solutions specialist and fintech innovator Dunstan Thomas, has provided the IT infrastructure, tools and user experience expertise to retirement product innovator Spire Platform Solutions.
Spire PS partnered with Novia Financial plc, the investment adviser wrap platform and Just Group plc, the leading provider of retirement income products, to develop a truly innovative Guaranteed Lifetime Income in-retirement product - named Secure Lifetime Income (SLI). Novia launched the UK’s first SLI offering to the IFA market in 2019. Spire PS now plans to offer the SLI to other providers and platforms.
Dunstan Thomas’ Integro CX product was deployed to create the Spire PS SLI secure portal and online annuity application questionnaire. Dunstan Thomas’ Imago Administration provides the back-end administrative capability for the product’s underlying funds; while Imago Illustrations delivers compliant SLI illustrations electronically. Dunstan Thomas has also completed integration work into Novia’s platform to make the SLI ready to process via the platform at launch.
Peter Ellis, Chief Executive of Spire Platform Solutions explains:
"Dunstan Thomas offered us a panoply of IT skills, products and retirement market expertise
which enabled us to both simplify and digitise the SLI’s online annuity application process,
while creating fully-compliant illustrations and strong pensions administration underpinning.
More than this, Dunstan Thomas put state-of-the-art cyber security and online access security
protections around the digital application process. This is particularly important because
sensitive personal medical records data will be collected via our online annuity questionnaire.
They’ve done thorough penetration testing on the whole system as part of our security
readiness for go live.”
Chris Read, Group Chief Executive, Dunstan Thomas Group, added:
“As a technology innovator with more than 30 years of expertise in the retirement space,
armed with Integro CX portal technology as well as our mature Imago product set and
strong Microsoft technical capabilities; we are able to assist Spire PS to get to market
quickly, working with long-term customer of ours Novia. We look forward to helping other
providers and platforms bring this innovative hybrid income drawdown and annuity product
offering to market.
The SLI deserves to do well. It’s in step with the flexibility of access to retirement income
which the post-Pension Freedoms world demands. Its ability to blend annuity and income
drawdown income inside a SIPP makes sense given the desire for people to have some guaranteed
income locked in, while keeping other retirement savings invested for growth for as long as possible.”