Insider - December 2024

With America’s President-Elect threatening to upend global trade and potentially the markets, and our own Government consulting on plans to change how tax is applied to pensions on death, the need for good financial advice looks set to be stronger than ever next year.

Whilst we’ve always had the good grace to accept the things we can’t change, 2025 will see us continue to make our voice heard, and to support you in the day-to-day challenges you will face.

Festive opening hours

Like most businesses, we operate slightly different hours during the festive period. Here’s an overview of when our teams will be working over Christmas and New Year:

AJ Bell Annual Results

We recently reported another excellent year for the business. As a profitable, well capitalised platform, we’re in a great position to help you and your clients achieve your aims – but we never forget that excellent service is key to our past and future success.

While increasing customers by 14% and AUA by 22%, I was delighted to see that the teams around the business maintained our strong service levels; like answering 97% of the 450,000 calls we received over the year within just 20 seconds. We will continue to invest in our service through 2025 and beyond to ensure we meet the standards you and your clients expect.

Another busy year

The past 12 months have seen us continue to invest in our platform, lobby on behalf of you and your clients, keep you fully informed on the changing regulatory landscape and give you useful information and insight.

More third-party MPS providers

I’m pleased to report that we’ve now added Hymans Robertson Investment Services, Marlborough, and Alpha Beta Partners to our ever-expanding roll call of third-party MPS providers, and we expect Quilter Cheviot and Quilter WealthSelect to be joining the list shortly, too. You can see the full list of current providers, here.

Cruise to smoother returns and lower costs

As part of our ongoing commitment to reduce costs and deliver value for investors, we’ve reduced the OCF on both our AJ Bell Income and AJ Bell Income & Growth Funds, as well as introducing smoothed monthly returns. Learn more about the funds and the changes here.

Continued investment in our platform technology

Designed with feedback from advisers, our new and improved client onboarding process and adviser charging functionality aim to continue to make the platform easier to use.

Similarly, our ‘regular investments into models’ feature is designed to ensure your clients’ regular investment instructions are automatically invested in line with their chosen model – without you having to do manual calculations or rebalance just to invest cash.

We’ve produced a user guide and a walkthrough video that should help you get to grips with the new ‘regular investments into models’ functionality.

Working with model portfolios

In response to your valuable feedback, we’ll soon be introducing two further developments to our models functionality in the V2.0 client dashboard.

The first upgrade will let you link Funds & Shares Service accounts to model portfolios. This enhancement should make it much faster and easier for you to set up, edit or delete your client links to models.

We’ll also be making it possible for you to specify a ‘pounds and pence’ amount of a client’s cash to ringfence for withdrawals and charges. When their account is rebalanced, the protected money will be excluded from the amount to be invested, helping with income payments and charges, as well as supporting phased investment into models over time.

We’ll be in touch in the coming weeks with more information, so keep an eye on your inbox.

On the front foot with face-to-face events

As usual, we invested a huge amount of time and energy delivering our highly-regarded Investival conference in November. If you couldn’t attend, you can watch the highlights in our on-demand webinar. Don’t forget that you can also register now for next year’s event and enjoy the full experience.

Challenging the Chancellor on IHT

Rachel Reeves’ decision to introduce inheritance tax on pensions could have serious consequences. Our CEO, Michael Summersgill, set out his concerns in an open letter where he said:

“The proposals set out by government create huge complexity and will delay families from accessing money in a timely fashion following a bereavement. In some cases the proposals will be unworkable and will create financial gridlock in the probate process, especially where assets held in the pension can’t be sold quickly.

“Add to this the fact that the proposals could result in millions of people paying a minimum tax rate of 64% on inherited pensions, and there is a real risk that confidence in pensions will be seriously eroded.”

You can find Michael’s full letter, here.

We’ll continue to engage and lobby for change in areas like this and will of course keep you up to date on how things evolve.

Technical changes from 18 November 2024

When the Government abolished the lifetime allowance (LTA) on 6 April 2024, it created some gaps within the legislation. To correct this, they introduced new regulations which came into force on 18 November. The main changes are as follows.

• We can now pay out Scheme Specific Lump Sums, and PCLS payments over £375,000 for clients with Enhanced and Primary Protection.
• Clients with Enhanced Protection can transfer without losing the benefits of that protection.
• The standard transitional calculation now ignores the age 75 test.
• Personal representatives of deceased clients have until 31 October following the tax year of a death benefits payment to apply for a TTFAC (living members must still apply before an RBCE).

Our Technical Team has updated its ‘Changes to correct new pension rules’ adviser guide, and we’ve altered all the relevant forms in the ‘Help’ section of our V2.0 website.

There’s also a new requirement for clients to send TTFACs to all their pension providers within 90 days of issue, which has been backdated to include all certificates issued since April. That means some clients only have until the earlier of their next relevant benefit crystallisation event (RBCE) and 15 February 2025 to send their TTFACs to the relevant parties. We will contact you in the coming days with more details, before writing to affected clients in early January to confirm what action they need to take – so please watch out for our email.

A look ahead to 2025

Whatever happens next year, our technical and investment experts will do their best to support and inform you as much as they can via the Techcentre and Investment Asset sections of our website. For everything else, there are our regional Business Support Teams – each of which now has its own dedicated page. If you haven’t already done so, it’s worth taking a look at the page for your region.

We’re looking forward to the launch of our app-based ‘Touch’ platform this year, and our team of roving experts have already organised another ‘On the Road’ tour for the end of February. If you’d like to attend one of these sessions, you can register for a place now.

Don’t let fraudsters spoil your Christmas

Cyber criminals tend to ramp up their activity during the festive season, so right now it’s more important than ever to be mindful of their activities.

To help keep you and your clients informed about the threat posed by online fraudsters, the tactics they use and the ways you can stay safe, we’ve created a fraud prevention area, featuring articles, research and updates from our experts.

It’s refreshed frequently, so be sure to look in regularly.

AJ Bell Great North Run – jump the queue

The next Great North Run will take place on 7 September 2025 in Newcastle. It’s the world’s largest half marathon, with over 60,000 runners allowed to take part. Needless to say, demand for those spots comfortably exceeds supply, so the event organisers award places by means of a ballot.

However, as title sponsor of the event, we can give you the opportunity to skip the ballot and get your hands on one of the places that we have reserved for financial professionals. All you need to do is complete this form to apply – once we’ve allocated you a ballot skip, our partner LetsDoThis will be in touch to explain how to complete your registration and payment.

Thank you for your continued support of AJ Bell, best wishes for a fantastic holiday period and a happy and healthy 2025!