Selectapension has introduced features to its defined benefit pension transfer tool, which will allow advisers to reduce their admin time when dealing with bulk advice.
The investment and planning software firm, which relaunched this tool in June 2018, is aiming to help advisers that work with several members in the same pension scheme.
This can happen when the advice firm has been appointed by the trustees of the DB pension fund or by the employer, and the circumstances will be the same for several clients.
Selectapension’s new bulk upload extra feature automatically maps and pre-populates the required fields within the DB pension transfer tool, and a hundred client cases can be imported in less than a minute, it stated.
Advice firms can save hours of administrative time by importing all their client and scheme data in one go, the software company added.
Peter Bradshaw, director at Selectapension, noted the investment showed the company was committed to the DB transfer market.
He said: “There is a lot of negativity in the market in terms of people pulling out of it.
“We want to say that while people are perhaps withdrawing from the market, we are still investing in it and we still believe in it.”
FTAdviser reported last week (August 29) that cashflow planning software provider CashCalc is withdrawing its transfer value comparator tool due to low demand amid a shrinking pension transfer advice market.
The Financial Conduct Authority expects the advice market for pension transfers to shrink even further after proposing a ban on contingent charging in July.
The new rules came after the watchdog’s survey of 3,015 firms between April 2015 and September 2018, which found too much of the advice on DB transfers was "still not of an acceptable standard".
It also voiced concern about the volumes of recommendations, with 69 per cent of clients having been recommended to transfer.
The watchdog found the average transfer advice value was £352,303, equivalent to a total value advised on of £82.8bn. This included both actual transfers and advice against it.
The FCA is concerned that firms are recommending that large numbers of consumers transfer out of their DB pension schemes, despite its stance that transfers are likely to be unsuitable for most clients.
maria.espadinha@ft.com
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