Transfer Authority Form- change of process & notice of new release COMMS 3rd June2020

Dear Client,

For us to continuously improve the user experience of our platform, it is important for us to utilise all client feedback and encourage our Technology team to develop innovative solutions. 

The next software release is planned for this coming weekend.  This will be the latest in a series of software updates on our platform due in 2020. The releases cover new features, and updates to procedures.

In summary, the latest update will include:

New features:

• Improvements to the use of Transfer Authority Forms: The below changes are being introduced to better handle the initial transfer requests and where possible avoid unnecessary delays.

1. Disclaimer.  For ALL products a new disclaimer will be added to the “Add/Amend contributions” function in the All Account Actions Cog and to the new application user journey.  This disclaimer will specifically instruct the Administrator / Adviser to confirm that the Transfer form has been signed by the Investor.  Without confirmation it will not be possible to proceed with the application. This disclaimer is required by Hubwise.

2. Transfer Authority Form.  The Transfer Authority Form needs to contain the account identifier as the primary reference.  Currently we request the Adviser to manually enter this detail on the form before dispatch.  This has led to forms being sent with no detail present causing delays in processing.  To address this problem, the Transfer Authority Form has been redesigned to ease checking and ensure all details are captured to conduct a transfer (cash or in-specie) including the account identifier. (e.g. HW000000123) 

This applies for GIA, ISA and JISA Transfers.    

IFA firms can capture an Investor signature for the GIA, ISA and JISA Transfer Authority Forms using:

• Wet signature scanned and saved to PDF

• Wet signature captured by an image (phone/photograph)

• Any e-Signature method (Adobe-Sign for example) which your firm may have available

• Transfer Authority Forms should then be saved to PDF and uploaded into the Investor Document Vault.

• NB: SIPP transfers are handled by the 3rd Party - see separate procedures for these.  There is no change to the SIPP transfer-in process at this time.

3. GIA, ISA & JISA Transfer Authority Form Submission.    The Adviser / Administrator should upload this “signed” form to the Investor’s document vault.  This upload facility is available today, however specific to this process the document type: “transfer authority form” should be selected.  The Transfer process will start once the form has been received via this method. The Transfer Authority Form will not be actioned if the Account Identifier is not present.

We no longer require the transfer authority form to be sent through the mail, however, if the ceding party refuses to accept an electronic transfer image, we may need to request the Adviser to send the physical paper form.  We expect this to be an uncommon event.

We no longer accept Transfer Authority Forms via email or Freshdesk. If this happens we will request that the IFA firm upload the form as described above in order to initiate the transfer process.

4. Monitoring the Transfer Authority Form Process.  With this new release we are introducing a system of control which will notify Administrators / Advisers where a Transfer Authority Form remains outstanding. This will be via email notification to the Adviser who is attached to this investor.  In this way we can ensure that the transfer process can run smoothly.  

• Instrument Swap: We will be introducing the ability for an instrument to be replaced with one or more instruments in a given model, or for all models for a given DFM or Company.  This meets the needs of many of our customers who wish to replace one instrument without conducting a switch or a rebalance that could result in unnecessary trading activity.  Further details explaining this process will follow shortly.

Improved features:

• Account details: The account details screen will be improved to show all archived fees correctly as greyed out entries.

System fixes:

• ISA limits: A bug enforcing the ISA subscriptions limit on ISA to ISA internal transfers will be fixed.

In addition to the web changes noted above we will go live with the use of the Calastone funds network from 3rd June.  This will operate alongside the EMX network and as well as provide for resilience we expect to benefit from the ability to conduct daily stock reconciliations with an increasing number of fund providers.

These changes are contained in the back office and will not impact how you interact with our platform. 

If you experience issues or have any questions, please raise a Freshdesk ticket with our Customer Services team as usual. 

For copies of our communications on the upcoming and previous releases, please visit the 'Knowledge Base' landing page on Freshdesk.