Insider - October 2024

As we march towards winter, we all face up to a financial services world with a new Government, and they certainly seem to mean business. What that means for your or indeed our business, remains to be seen. More will be revealed at the upcoming budget, and as ever we’ll be picking over the details to try and help you navigate any changes.

What you can always be certain of is that our commitment to constantly developing AJ Bell Investcentre never stops. To that end, I bring news of two more platform enhancements, details of our forthcoming Investival conference and much more…

All change?

As usual, the spectre of tax and pension changes hangs over the 30 October budget. But this year there’s more noise than usual, largely driven by the alleged £22bn hole in the public purse, and the usual suspects of tax relief and tax-free lump sums have been joined by mooted changes to both capital gains and inheritance taxes.

Whatever happens, our technical experts will be on hand to digest the detail and explain what it could all mean for you and your clients. Watch for our reactions and analysis on budget day.

Investival 2024 is nearly sold out

On a lighter note, Investival 2024 is in the diary for Thursday 14 November at London’s Shaw Theatre, and over 95% of the seats are already reserved.

For those of you who haven’t yet experienced it, Investival combines the insight of an investment conference with the laid-back approach and soundtrack of a music festival. If you can make it, you’ll hear from our own Michael Summersgill and Russ Mould alongside other renowned industry speakers like Jason Pidcock and Sebastian Lyon, while also enjoying good food, great company and live music into the night.

We’ll also be hosting four of our popular campfire chats, where key industry experts gather to discuss the big topics of the day.

There’s still time to secure your seat, but I wouldn’t hang about.

Upcoming platform enhancements

From our streamlined client onboarding process to our improved capital gains tax calculator, rarely a month goes by without us unveiling a major new platform enhancement - this month is no different.

Our new enhanced adviser charging functionality will allow you to create different charging groups and charging structures – all entirely online. As well as making the whole process more flexible, it should make it much more efficient too. You will be pleased to know that this launched in October 2024 – you can find more information, here.

We’ve also introduced some more security enhancements. These include client alerts whenever certain transactions are requested, and two-factor authentication (2FA), which will make the login process even more secure than it already is. You can learn more, and arrange a demo with an expert, here.

Keep your eyes open for more developments in the coming months – including our soon-to-be-unveiled ‘regulars into models’ functionality.

New additions to Third-party MPS offering

Due to popular demand, we’ve just added Pacific Asset Management to our list of third-party MPS providers. Other recent additions include EBI and Evelyn Partners, and more are on their way in the coming months. You can see the full list of current providers, here.

SIPP vs Retirement Investment Account (RIA)

Different retirement clients often have very different needs, it is why we offer our RIA alongside our SIPP. Often, it’s a question of providing you with options to fit different values and investment needs to different client scenarios.

To help you with this we have compiled a direct comparison of both accounts, together with a handy cost comparison tool, on our dedicated page.

Fighting the fight against fraud

As part of our ongoing commitment to helping you stay one step ahead of fraudsters, we’ve brought together a wealth of fraud and scam prevention resources from our experts, and put them all in our handy online fraud prevention area.

You can also expect to start receiving regular communications from us, featuring the latest research and articles on how to protect yourself and your clients.

We’ve changed our T&Cs

We’ve made some changes to our terms and conditions. These changes, which took effect from 3 October 2024, reflect the continual enhancements we make to our platform in order to improve the service, speed and functionality we provide. The changes also cover future platform developments, like tiered adviser charging, and the ability to make regular investments into model portfolios.

We’ve made some other tweaks to provide greater clarity around our processes, and to keep our terms and conditions, communications and literature aligned.

This summary document explains the changes we’ve made. The full, updated terms and conditions are available to view on our customer website.

Simplifying the transitional arrangements

The end of the lifetime allowance means more complicated transitional arrangements. If you’re struggling to get your head around them all, fear not – our Technical guru, Lisa Webster, has ridden to the rescue with a new webinar series.

Rather than tackling this thorny subject all in one go, she’s broken it down into four, easily digestible chunks. You can watch them at your leisure on-demand, here.

Award-winning products – but what do you think?

September saw us pick up the ‘Best SIPP’ accolade at the Money Marketing awards, followed by ‘Best Stocks & Shares ISA Provider’ at the Moneyfacts Life and Pensions awards – where we were also highly commended for ‘Best SIPP Provider’ and ‘Best Income Drawdown Provider’.

I was also delighted to see Money Marketing name our investments team ‘Best Investment Solutions Provider’ for the first time – great to see such well-deserved recognition for Ryan and the team.

These awards are a fantastic vindication of all the hard work that people across our business put into delivering our products and services, but we never rest on our laurels. That’s why we run our annual survey.

The survey is one of the most effective ways we have of gathering your feedback and understanding what we do well, and where we could do better. You can have your say, here – it should only take a few minutes to complete.