Quilter has confirmed that its long-anticipated re-platforming will happen on the weekend of February 22/23, and stated adviser nerves about this event had hurt the business in the last quarter.
The announcement was contained in a trading update from Quilter this morning (January 29) in which it confirmed the imminent technological change had hampered inflows, both to the platform and to the wider wealth management operation.
Replatformings at Aegon and Aviva had in recent years led to issues where advisers were unable to access a range of functions on those platforms for prolonged periods of time.
Quilter’s re-platforming has already been an expensive and time consuming process.
When it terminated its contract with tech provider IFDS and switched to FNZ in May 2017 it said it had spent over £200m on the platform, and expected to spend about £160m more. In June 2019, the company said the re-platforming was "on track."
Commenting as part of the trading update Quilter chief executive Paul Feeney said: “Net flows into the UK platform remain subdued ahead of migrating advisers and customers onto our new platform this year. This, in turn, led to more modest flows into Quilter Investors.
"Stable gross flows in the fourth quarter relative to the prior year demonstrate the strength of our adviser and customer-focussed platform business model.
"More importantly, we are pleased that the initial migration of customers onto our new platform is currently planned for the weekend of 22/23 February 2020.
"Our advisers and clients who are involved in this process have been notified accordingly. Our new UK platform will be transformational for Quilter – it has taken time to get to this point and we are excited about the ability to drive further business growth once we have fully migrated onto the new platform by the end of this summer.”
The advice and wealth management units of the Quilter business had net inflows of £100m in the three months to the end of December 2019, with positive market movements of £900m contributing to asset growth.
The total assets under management for this business were £45.8bn at the end of the year.
The wealth platforms business, which comprises both the UK platform and an international one, had total net inflows of £600m in the three months, of which £300m came to the UK platform.
The Quilter Financial Planning business had assets under administration of £800m, down 20 per cent in three months, which the company attributed to negative market movements.
david.thorpe@ft.com
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