Intelliflo and SS&C Technologies have developed a ‘deep integration’ between their offerings as the next step in straight through processing and the drive for greater efficiencies for advice firms.
Wealthlink, the collaboration between intelliflo and technology provider SS&C Technologies, is “the deepest ever integration” between practice management software and investment platform, Intelliflo said.
The integration will allow all points of the client journey from instructing transfers and building portfolios to allocating capital across tax wrappers to be carried out within the Intelliflo environment.
Nick Eatock, CEO of Intelliflo, said: “The industry has taken huge strides forward, but we can all agree that advisory firms are still having to re-key data too many times, learn too many systems and spend too much valuable time jumping from one system to another.
“With the launch of wealthlink, advisory firms will only ever need to key a client’s details in once. They can then go through their client’s advice journey using all intelliflo offers, from discovery, cashflow modelling and setting up the client’s plan, to getting the money invested and utilising the client portal.”
Eatock said admin time per client will reduce significantly, while re-keying errors will be eliminated.
Eatock added: “Paraplanners using intelliflo will be accomplished in creating documents within the system and using the advice flow which is the bedrock on which the integration with SS&C is built. Now, they are going to be in the position that once the advice has been signed off and everything is ready to go, of just having to click a button. It’s an end-to-end flow. They are not going to have to know multiple systems and can focus on the value-add part of the job rather than chasing paper around. It will make their life a lot easier.”
Nick Wright, general manager of SS&C Global Investor and Distribution Solutions, commented: “The combined power of the respective technologies will deliver a streamlined and fully integrated platform offering addressing this long-standing industry problem.
“Advisers have continuously told us they want a quick and easy way to execute investment business from within intelliflo, both for account opening and client servicing. We are dedicated to helping achieve this goal through the breadth and depth of our APIs, ensuring advisers never have to leave the intelliflo experience.”
Platform charges are on a per client account basis and are 0.15% up to £249,999, 0.125% from £249,999 to £499,999 and 0.10% from £499,999 to £999,999. For clients with assets of over £1 million, the charge will drop to 0.05%.
Eatock added: “We had one-way integration, and then two-way integration. Now we’re taking it to a whole new concept – ‘intelligent integration.’ The deeper connections and closer collaborations support us all widening access to financial advice.”
Wealthlink will go live with a user group of Intelliflo customers later this year with view to a general roll out by the end of the year, Eatock said.
Ian McKenna, founder and CEO of the Financial Technology Research Centre (FTRC) said the approach is one that intelliflo could repeat across multiple platforms.
“Such integration should have been built by platforms years ago, but platforms have preferred to deliver a poor experience to advisers and their clients in order to maintain their own brand presence in the transaction.
“Similar capability was made available via the Intelliflo store 7 years ago, but platforms failed to take advantage of the opportunity. This time Intelliflo have partnered with a platform who are delivering the unified experience so essentially the rest of the platform community has a really simple decision to make, rise to the opportunity of the vast improvements for advisers and consumers that the wealthlink standard creates or watch a large amount of your AUM start to trickle, then flow then flood away.
“Raising the bar in operating standards in the platform market is long overdue. Consumers and advisers will benefit from this. The one thing we really need now is for the FCA to breathe life back into their faster transfers requirements for platforms and workplace pensions.”
