AJ Bell has launched a new streamlined platform which it believes will help address the advice gap.
AJ Bell Touch is a mobile app that allows customers to receive, review and approve actions from their advisers and enact payments to their accounts through open banking integration.
Customers can also view their portfolios and contact their advisers through a secure message facility.
Advisers can send their recommendations and key documents to their clients digitally through the adviser website for fast and secure approval.
AJ Bell said it is the first fully proprietary digital proposition of its kind in the UK adviser market to provide advised clients with an entirely mobile app-based customer experience.
The new platform will sit alongside AJ Bell’s existing Investcentre advised platform and Custody Solutions institutional offering. It comes with a custody charge of 0.25% on pension assets and 0.20% for Individual Savings Accounts and General Investment Accounts with no other fees payable.
AJ Bell said AJ Bell Touch will allow advisers to service new clients with smaller portfolios, which will help firms broaden their target market and tackle the advice gap.
According to the latest FCA Financial Lives survey, 9% of Brits received regulated financial advice in the year to May 2024, with only 17% turning to government-backed guidance services such as Pension Wise and MoneyHelper.
Mark Rendle, advised platforms product director at AJ Bell, said: “We are delighted to be launching AJ Bell Touch at what is a critical juncture for advisers and the nation’s finances. AJ Bell Touch will provide advisers with a streamlined, scalable mobile app-based proposition that allows them to serve and connect with a wider range of clients more easily. This will result in a more efficient adviser-client trust relationship, while also enhancing family wealth management and supporting advisers in incubating clients of the future.
“With many financial planning uncertainties on the horizon, not least the Government’s proposed changes to the way pensions are taxed on death, regulated advice has never been more important. We believe Touch will help to address that advice gap by connecting advisers with those clients who might otherwise find themselves below the average asset value threshold by reducing the administrative burden for both parties and augmenting that trust relationship rather than seeking to replace it.”
Advisers and clients will be able to deal immediately in around 70 multi-asset funds, including the full range of AJ Bell funds, with development in progress to expand the fund range available on Touch as well as the delivery of ETF dealing.
Support for model portfolios, including third-party DFM ranges, is also set to follow.
While the app will initially target accumulation-only customers, at-retirement options are currently in development, AJ Bell said.
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