The time taken to move assets from one platform to another is set to vastly improve in 2015 after the vast majority of investors’ money can now be transfered automatically.
The Tisa Exchange - known as Tex - now has 97 per cent of all UK platform assets signed up.
This means those assets can now be transfered electronically rather than manually via paperwork.
Tisa said more than 120,000 automated transfers now take place each month and the number has risen from 5,000 in January last year to one millio in 2014.
Transfer times of as little as two minutes have also been reported by Tex members where all the processes have been fully automated and integrated. Prior to the establishment of Tex transfer times of three months were not uncommon.
Tex chairman, David Dalton-Brown, said “incredible progress” had been made in the past 12 months.
“We have achieved our core goals in substantially reducing the time taken to transfer a customer’s portfolio of assets, and have been informed that there has been a marked reduction in the number of complaints by customers,” he said.
“But more can be done and we are continuing to work with the financial services industry to encourage fully integrated electronic processes between providers so that transfers in minutes, rather than days, become the norm.
“Our next goal is to extend our scope to wealth and boutique managers to ensure they also benefit from the advantages of our open standards. We owe it to investors to ensure that this functionality is available and then to reduce the time it takes for these transfers to take place.”
Tex was established to help improve electronic transfers of wrappers and assets between fund managers, platforms and wealth managers.
As a result of the initiative, the internationally-recognised standard ISO 20022 was developed, which has enabled the industry to introduce common standards of processing and common service level agreements to which all participants need to comply.
