The platform, which reported strong growth for 2021 enabling extensive investment in people, technology, operations, and support functions, says it prioritised enhancing its pension decumulation functionality and faster trade cycles in response to adviser demand.
Advisers using Novia Financial can now deploy new benefit crystallisation event and pension income functionality as part of a package of platform enhancements. The new drip feed drawdown for pensions gives advisers a wider choice of pension options to select for their clients including the option to do regular benefit crystallisation events (BCE) on a chosen day of the month.
Clients can now take tax free cash up to 25% and designate the remainder to drawdown, choosing to take the full or partial amount immediately as taxable income or leave it in their drawdown account. This has the benefit of leaving the tax-free lump sum not yet taken to potentially grow in line with the rest of the uncrystallised portion of their Self Invested Personal Pension.
Clients can also specify their payment date for regular income payments which can be monthly, quarterly, or annually. This means that advisers no longer need to manage the pension withdrawal process on an ad hoc basis and can give one instruction for regular crystallisations.
In addition to the BCE enhancements, the platform has introduced new, faster trade cycles, reducing the time out of the market for clients’ investments. During a switch of an investment, instead of all sales being fully settled before purchases are placed, as soon as the contract note is issued for the final sell the switch or new asset purchase will be placed.
Instructing purchases when sales are confirmed means a quicker trading cycle, and the quicker the cycle completes, the sooner the client’s investment is back in the market.
Commenting on these latest platform enhancements, Barry Neilson, Chief Commercial Officer, said: “Advisers told us these two enhancements were important to them and their clients, because they help create greater efficiency and flexibility. We listened and we acted. These are just the first enhancements in a series of planned developments responding to adviser demand.
“We’re continually investing and evolving our technology structure to deliver the very best platform experience and our adoption of microservices will allow us to continue to introduce new, innovative features in the future.”
