My question is, how do the logistics of this work?
Does the annuity provider send the request to the pension provider for the relevant sum, the pension providers send them the money, pays out the tax-free cash and the remainder is left within the pension?
Does it require the pension provider to allow partial transfers?

any help would be appreciated.

Nathan

Do you love getting stuck into detail, guiding people through processes, and building moments of connection? We are looking for a detail-oriented, personable Client Administrator to join our close-knit team at Emery Little, working with our Planners to administer and implement our clients’ Financial Plans, to our exceptional standards.

If this sounds like you, we'd love to hear from you.

More details are on our website https://emerylittle.com/about-emery-little/careers/client-administrator/

I am biased, but this is honestly an incredible place to work, with a fantastic culture, wonderful people and a truly inspiring vision of the future.

We have tried using the Unipass ULoA system to reduce the amount of signatures that we need to collect, but this has been hit and miss with providers sometimes accepting/not accepting the ULoA, and very inconsistently.
Likewise we could use DocuSign, but some providers do accept it and some don't so we tend to go for the wet signature option to keep things simple.

I spoke to an advisor in a different practice yesterday who does things differently. It seems a more efficient and quicker process, but still flawed.
1. In the first meeting they get the client to list all the policy details on one sheet
2. The client signs that sheet to authorise releasing the information.
3. They then send a copy of that sheet to all the providers.

But I’m not sure how you would redact all of the other plan information on the sheet so that you’re not sharing it with the other providers.
So what do other people do?

We are looking to improve our suitability reports to ensure they are not so clunky and are more user friendly, our own personalised branding is a must so it is visually appealing.

Does anyone have any contacts for template creation or report writing tools.

Thanks in advance

I hope everyone is safe and well!

I’m currently reviewing our support team structure and exploring some potential changes to the CSA (admin) team in particular with the aim of setting us up for growth, improving efficiencies, the client experience, development opportunities for the team etc.
There are obviously a lot of different options, all of which have their own pros and cons, so I’m interested to find out what works well in other financial planning firms of various sizes.

We currently have around 450 client groups that we work with. We have 8 advisers, 9 paraplanners (one of which is currently transitioning into a trainee adviser), 6 CSAs and 2 people in our portfolio team who are responsible for the platform trading and performance analysis. Currently all of the support team except the portfolio team are client facing and have their own client allocations across all advisers.

The main aim of this structure was for the CSAs to be the initial point of contact for clients freeing up the advisers and PPs from general or quick queries. In reality we are finding that most clients are still going to advisers. Here's a very brief summary of some of the key benefits and struggles we are currently experiencing.

Key Benefits
*The team really benefits from working with a wider range of team members and this is great for their development
*Having designated client allocations allows the team to build stronger relationships and improve the client experience
*Spreading the client bank across teams works well for sickness and holiday cover and allows us to smooth out some of peaks and troughs in workload
*It encourages the consistency of process across the team
*Having a small number of specialised people trading on the platform has reduced the risk/amount of errors

Key Struggles
*Reallocating clients when people progress or move into different roles. Sometimes the clients don't stay with a consistent team long enough to build a true relationship
*Due to reallocations the advisers aren't always getting the consistent quality support they require from a team who truly knows the client and the client experience isn't great when team members are changing
*Work isn't always turned around as quickly as advisers are expecting due to the team managing and prioritising and multiple advisers and clients
*The CSA is meant to be responsible for keeping the team and clients up to date on new business but a slightly removed from the process due to having a separate portfolio team. Advisers often skip the correctly communication channel and go straight to the portfolio team for an update rather than the CSA.

I'm really interested to hear your experiences and thoughts, particularly if any of you work on a pooled rather than a client allocation bases, or 1:1 with an adviser.

Thanks v much
Tracey

David Hall at Origo kindly did a demo for us last week, and from what I have seen, it looks good! The idea being that you obtain a single electronic signature, and then use the system to send the LOA directly to multiple providers. You can also get “real time” status updates, meaning no more hanging on the telephone when chasing.

Most of the main product providers have been involved in the planning, and they are hoping to launch Sept/Oct time.

I am sure there will still be cases that fall outside “the norm”, but in the main it should help to streamline a lot of the work. They hope to launch with pensions initially, and then introduce investments and protection. The information supplied by the product providers will be supplied in an agreed consistent format.

It will be free initially, but likely a small licence fee later down the line (about £8.50).

origo.com/services/UnipassLetterofAuthority/services-unipassletterofauthority.aspx