For the past few months, advisers using Aviva’s platform have been beset with problems.
In January, the insurer migrated its users to a new platform and the subsequent embedding of its functionality has not exactly gone swimmingly. The platform has inadvertently told advisers of sudden drops in the value of their clients’ portfolios, prevented advisers from logging in, and stopped some clients from being moved to a new fund.
Fixing
The company said it is still working hard to fix the issues, but many advisers have felt aggrieved, contemplating moving to another platform. Others who have learnt of their own platform migrating client assets to new technology underpinning it are wondering if they should switch or do something perhaps less radical if everyone is going to experience problems.
Verona Smith, head of platform at Seven Investment Management, said: “I think the challenge for advisers is to do the due diligence on the platform. If you’re going to replatform, what does this mean for the business process they have? If the platform is changing, some of their processes have to change.”
In fact, in many cases, the adviser needs to take some responsibility him or herself about the change the platform is going through.
Miranda Seath, research director at consultancy Platforum, said a platform may well have told advisers ahead of the exercise that it was undergoing a transformation and there were certain things advisers could put in place to manage it.
She said: “There will certainly be potential challenges to look out for. Their platform should have contacted them and given a timescale. If they haven’t received their communication email, I would try and phone their relationship manager, just to check if there’s anything they need to do.
“Their log-in details may change as a result of the migration because the new system requires new details. These details should be supplied by the platform, and they should be getting in touch with them. We know that some advisers type into the system expecting everything to be the same. If advisers are on a platform that is going through a migration process they need to be mindful of communications.”
Training
Ms Seath added: “Most platforms have been mindful about training and it’s worth doing these training modules or webinars – there are going to be challenges and it does take time to get used to the new operating system.”
It is also worth working out who advisers’ contact point at the company is, checking with their business development manager – if they have a dedicated one. Ms Seath said one of the challenges is that in a period of transition there is likely to be a high volume of calls, so advisers should do as much as they can, based on the communication they have received from the platform in the first instance.
She said: “It may be that they haven’t done the training [which is a start] rather than having to wait on the phone for an hour because the platform is going to get a lot of calls.”
Much of the ire has been directed at Aviva, with advisers claiming in anger that they will move platform once the current process has finished, because of the impact it has had on their client relationships. Aegon, which is moving Cofunds’ assets onto a revamped version of its own platform has had teething issues of its own, although not to the same degree.
But Ian McKenna, director at the Finance & Technology Research Centre, said it would be a mistake to rush to judgment if an adviser’s platform has had technical issues in its replatforming exercise. He said: “I would actually be concerned about looking at who are the platforms who haven’t moved their assets. The life companies that are replatforming, they’re making the ongoing investment in technology they need to. It will always need updating.
Old kit
“If you have a 20-year-old piece of technology that has never migrated to a new system, you’ve got some key pieces of your infrastructure sitting on some old kit, and if you don’t make these migrations, it constrains what you can do.
“It will be interesting to see three or five years down the line how the early movers have shaped up. In the grand scheme of things, I think there’s a lot of positives in having got that migration out the way,” Mr McKenna added. In fact, he and many others, are sympathetic with Aviva, and others that have had problems. Mr McKenna said: “These replatforming exercises are huge under-takings. In the case of Aviva, they moved £20bn in assets from one technology system to another. The chances of doing one of these exercises and nothing going wrong – there’s inevitably going to be some problems.
“I would be worried about moving from a platform that’s doing its replatforming to one that hasn’t, as they’re putting in technology for the next 20 years.”
Old Mutual Wealth (OMW) has been upgrading the old Skandia platform over the past 11 months. It has not been an easy process, and the company made a decision to use a different software provider halfway through. But the company said it has heeded what has happened with other platforms and is taking steps to manage the process more effectively.
Jeremy Mugridge, head of proposition marketing for OMW, said it is getting ready for its migration next year when clients will be moved to the new platform it is currently building with FNZ.
He said: “We’re already training the trainers, we’re getting geared up and getting customers and advisers ready. Our user experience team has been into financial advisers’ offices and have been testing this in the office environment.
“We are coming after a number of other platforms, which has been helpful for us, as we’ve been able to learn about some of the things that could be done better in other groups.”
Ms Smith said: “I don’t think Aviva has messed up. It’s a massive challenge, and you should never underestimate how big the challenge is. A change costs a lot of money. It’s a hard thing to do and when you’re doing it you’ve got a plan, a project management, and all these things in place.
“You need to keep coming back to the reason they’re doing it, to make things more efficient, hopefully to drive down costs and for future proofing.”
Melanie Tringham is features editor of Financial Adviser
