James Hay, part of Nucleus Financial Platforms, has partnered with data tech provider Origo on its Unipass letter of authority (LOA) service.
The firm said this Unipass service, which will be live on the James Hay platform on July 3, will improve the LOA process for both advisers and their clients.
Using the service, the LOA process will be completed in a fraction of the time it takes currently, it said.
It also enables advisers to track the process from start to finish, allowing them to keep the client fully informed as well as providing a higher level of security and GDPR compliance.
Steve Knight, customer and business operations director at Nucleus, said: “As a platform our main purpose is to help improve the adviser experience and we are constantly looking for ways to invest in and improve adviser interactions.
“This is a fantastic example of how we can do this. Origo’s digitised solution transforms the current process, providing a faster more client friendly service which in turn allows advisers to spend their time on more value-add support for their clients.
“We’re working on bringing the same efficiency to the Nucleus platform soon.”
Anthony Rafferty, chief executive officer at Origo, said this is a service that financial advisers have had at the top of their wish list for a number of years as a way to improve their onboarding service.
“With consumer duty requiring companies to look at every aspect of their business to ensure good outcomes for consumers and avoid foreseeable harm, providers are quickly realising the benefits Unipass LOA delivers for them, advice firms and the end client.
“We expect to see more companies turn to technology to help them address the pain points in their processes and to ensure their service levels deliver against the new rules.”
A report by the Lang Cat last year found that LOAs are a significant barrier in the advice process and that transfers remain a massive source of frustration.
The Lang Cat tested the worst-case scenarios for time taken from submitting an LOA to getting full, satisfactory data and the timeframe often ran to several months.
In the worst cases, firms were waiting over six months for the data they had asked for.
sonia.rach@ft.com
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