David Thompson, managing director, Elevate, AXA Wealth, comments on planned changes to the platform ahead of the new pension rules being introduced from April 2015.
“The savings and retirement market was already undergoing fundamental changes due to societal and demographic shifts; but the 2014 Budget was a seismic quake, where the industry were required to step up to provide access to the new freedoms and flexibilities that were introduced. Elevate has met this challenge by enhancing our pension proposition and reviewing our charging structures.
“We expect the pension changes coming into force in the next financial year to accelerate flows onto platforms, as they: allow financial planning advisers and their clients to spread wealth easily over multiple tax wrappers; offer flexible ways of retrieving income and a place to store and invest the money you have. We are also set to launch a new flexible drawdown service in time for the pension changes coming into force in April 2015.
“The Elevate platform provides advisers with the functionality to manage retirement benefits in real-time on the platform, making immediate withdrawals and income payments. As a business we were ready for the introduction of the new ISA rules in July and now offer an improved rate of interest of 65bps for those choosing to hold money in cash, prior to investing. This will help advisers and their clients take full advantage of the new drawdown rules and allow clients to take pension benefits directly from their accumulated pension savings.”
AXA Wealth’s Elevate platform was one of, if not the first platform to offer a full online drawdown solution, giving advisers full control over how much of the clients pension fund to move into drawdown and when. We see the new UFPLS (Uncrystallised Fund Pension Lump Sum) and Flexible Drawdown options as an extension of the online income options we already provide through Elevate Pension Investment Account.
AXA Wealth’s Elevate platform will provide Advisers with a wide range of choices about how they make pension withdrawals for clients, to ensure income can be provided in the most tax efficient way possible, including the ability to choose whether to make a withdrawal from accumulated pension or drawdown pension pots. The new flexibility offered by the pension legalisation, along with the existing options Elevate provides for meeting clients income requirements, means it is well placed to provide a comprehensive range of choices for how to generate the income required by the client in the most tax efficient way possible. With the added benefit of using the existing Elevate cash account to combine income from multiple sources, so that the client receives a single payment.
David added: “As part of our commitment to continuously evolving Elevate we already had improvements to our pension planned for this year, the budget changes have given us the opportunity to go further, which we think is excellent news for clients and their advisers. The draft legislation has only been published this week , so we are still working on the exact details. Crucially we are planning to make this functionality as an enhancement to the current Elevate drawdown options – where everything is done on platform under the adviser’s direct control which means instructions can be made in real-time without additional paper forms and client signatures.”
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