Standard Life has unveiled a series of improvements to both of its platforms.
The changes to both the Standard Life Wrap and Elevate are aimed at improving the support and end-to-end experience advisers and their clients get from the services.
Both platforms will see 12 changes in total, with Standard Life Wrap getting new adviser portfolio management capabilities with auto-rebalancing and auto-tailoring of portfolios to reduce time taken over portfolio management as well as the ability to manage platform assets held in third party tax wrappers and extended coverage of integrated capital gains tax scenario planning.
Meanwhile Elevate users will get access to wider range of discretionary fund managers and the ability to mix and match different investment approaches as well as enhanced reporting of adviser portfolios and clearer labelling convention and graphical representation.
The whole programme of changes is expected to take 12 months and the provider's announcement comes just two days after Aegon completed the technology upgrade of Cofunds' retail book of customers after its acquisition of the platform giant in 2016.
David Tiller, head of adviser and wealth manager propositions at Standard Life, said: "2017 was a fantastic year for our platforms with the biggest inflows we have ever seen and to support adviser service levels, we prioritised stability and process enhancements.
"This has all been against the backdrop of delivering the large scale regulatory change demanded by Mifid II and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). With this work now nearing completion we have released capacity to focus firmly on development.
"Our platforms are used by over 3,000 adviser firms who are telling us the challenges they are facing and with a huge number of potential clients seeking advice along with the significant demands of ongoing drawdown advice, adviser capacity is being seriously stretched.
"Advisers need to know they are able to rely on their platform to find new ways of helping their business scale up, while ensuring continuity of service.
"The development plans we are announcing today (9 May) build on solid foundations to take a major leap forward in the support that Wrap and Elevate will be able to provide advisers."
Axa sold Elevate to Standard Life in 2016 after abandoning the UK life and pensions market to refocus its business.
Standard Life Wrap and Elevate have a combined assets under administration of £54.02bn.
Rival Aegon's upgrade of Cofunds took place over the Bank Holiday weekend and saw more than 400,000 users and £37bn of assets moved across to the Aegon Platform.
This was the third stage in the integration of Cofunds with Aegon, with the Investor Portfolio Service and institutional service having upgraded in December and March respectively.
Rival Aviva for Advisers has been haunted by glitches since its replatforming to FNZ technology in January.
The platform was unavailable for six days beginning on the evening of 17 January and just one day after it came back online advisers and their clients found themselves locked out.
Since then there have been problems with processing adviser charges, switching funds, processing income drawdown, facilitating Isa contributions and erroneous alerts sent out indicating huge value drops in client portfolios.
Aviva said it was working to fix the issues and has already re-allocated resources to speed up the process.
damian.fantato@ft.com
