7IM today announces a major overhaul of its transfer process, marking a key milestone in its multi-million-pound, multi-year investment into its award-winning proprietary platform. This transformation is a core pillar of the firm’s strategic growth plans, aimed at delivering exceptional service to advisers and clients, and reinforcing its position as a leading vertically integrated wealth manager.
The first phase introduces an automated system for new pensions and investment transfers, reducing the need for manual form-filling and reducing transfer times by up to 25%. This development follows extensive adviser feedback, which highlighted widespread industry frustration with slow and opaque transfer processes. According to The Pensions Regulator, the average time to switch a defined contribution pension is currently 31 days.
To complement the automation, 7IM has significantly upgraded how advisers can track transfer progress, with the new functionality now offering real-time updates and greater transparency. Advisers can monitor transfer progress directly through the platform, reducing the need for status-chasing and enabling faster, clearer client communication.
The platform is now exploring further integration tools – including those from providers such as Equisoft (formerly known as Altus) – to streamline the process further. These enhancements will reduce manual rekeying, cut down on human error, and save even more time for advisers and their support teams.
Since introducing these enhancements, over 75% of new transfers are now completed within the businesses’ SLAs, with some pension cash transfers taking place within three days. Similarly, 7IM’s platform service desk has also seen a 38% reduction in calls from advisers relating to transfers indicating they’re able to access the updates and information they need instantly from the platform’s new reporting functionality.
This transformation is underpinned by 7IM’s migration to a cloud-based infrastructure, enabling a more scalable and resilient platform. This shift allows the business to track and share key metrics – such as average transfer times – helping advisers manage client expectations and enabling 7IM to make smarter, data-led decisions about where to focus resources.
Alongside its technology investment, 7IM has strengthened its service proposition by hiring four new platform relationship managers, two service managers, and a new Head of Platform in the past 12 months.
Russell Lancaster, Managing Director, Platform and Intermediary Partnerships at 7IM said: “We’ve made transfers central to our transformation programme because we know how much it matters to advisers and to clients. We know they often mark the start of the client’s journey and their first interaction with us, and we want this to be a brilliant one.
“It’s a huge concern that the current state of play with transfers deters many from wanting to change providers and secure the best outcomes for clients. Our job is to ensure we get this right, quickly, clearly and cleanly. With these enhancements that’s the experience we want to give advisers and their clients and that’s what we’re working towards every time.”
