For professional advisers only

It seems these days there’s no such thing as an uneventful quarter, and Q3 has proved no different.

In my Q2 deep dive, I wondered whether Q3 would see a Budget in September or October. Well, now we know: after the quarter opened with Labour’s seismic election landslide, new Chancellor Rachel Reeves has set the Autumn Budget for 30 October.

Headlines leading up to party conference season in September were dominated by the £22bn so-called ‘black hole’ Reeves maintains Labour has inherited, and she forewarned of tough decisions being necessary. Restricting winter fuel payments was one immediate – and divisive – action.

Having previously ruled out increasing income tax, employees’ NI, VAT and corporation tax, how else might revenue be raised to fill the black hole? Speculation is rife, with various commentators suggesting changes to IHT, CGT, ISAs or pensions taxation as part of the picture. At the time of writing, the Chancellor has reportedly ruled out plans to change tax relief on pension contributions, for being too difficult and with a potentially disproportionate impact on public sector workers[1].

While we’ll have to wait until next week to see exactly what the Chancellor has in store, the mood music at the recent Labour Party conference was very much around ‘investing for growth’. We know from the previously announced pensions review that this will include using the pension system to drive UK investment, which points to interesting times ahead for the industry.

During the quarter, we also saw the first anniversary of Consumer Duty and the announcement of a call for input into how the FCA’s retail conduct rules can be simplified. This forms part of a wider focus on decluttering regulation, although the government and FCA made it clear that the goal is to address areas of “complexity, duplication, confusion, or over-prescription[2],” not to retract any rules the industry finds onerous.

What’s on at Wealthtime

We’re evolving – delivering the next generation platform

Our priority has always been to deliver a market-leading platform experience that delivers the best outcomes for advisers and their clients. We’re always looking for ways to improve our platform and service for our customers. That’s why we’re delighted to announce that we’ve secured an agreement that will help us do just that.

We’ve entered into a partnership with Wipro, a global technology company, which provides IT, consulting, and business process services and its global technology partner GBST, to deliver a digital-first platform and innovative customer-centric service offering.

The agreement supports our long-term growth ambitions and draws on Wipro’s extensive technology and operational expertise to ensure that we continue to meet the evolving needs of advisers and their clients. It also extends our 15-year technology partnership with GBST with the Wealthtime platform undertaking accelerated enhancements to our technology and proposition in 2025.

The deal will see the Wealthtime and Wealthtime Classic platforms brought together under one brand on a significantly enhanced platform, powered by GBST technology.

We know that advisers are best served by exceptional people supported by world-class technology. This announcement allows us to focus on our strengths, delivering a wealth of service and technological efficiencies as we build scale to realise our long-term growth ambitions.

Learn more about our evolution on our website.

Rethinking Retirement

The FCA also issued an update on its retirement income market data for 2023/24^[3]. This shows that the number of people taking regulated advice when accessing their pension for the first time fell from 33% in 2022/23 to 31% in 2023/24. While the change is small, it points to a concerning trend when you factor in that the number of pensions accessed for the first time increased by nearly 20% over the same period.

The data comes at a time when the FCA has highlighted the sustainability of income in retirement and ensuring clients have good outcomes as a key focus for advisers. In early October, the regulator issued a Dear CEO letter reinforcing its expectations for retirement income advice, with further commentary expected in Q1 2025[4]. To help firms build and maintain a top-class retirement service, we’re hosting another round of Rethinking Retirement events across the UK in October. Experts from Mabel Insights, Conduct Culture, Just and Copia will join Wealthtime to share best practices. This week, we finished off our run in the South West and East!

Supporting the next generation of advisers

The FCA has been busy with data updates this quarter. Its latest retail intermediary market data showed that the number of staff advising on retail investment products fell slightly from 28,227 in 2022 to 27,941 in 2023[5]. While the fall in advisers is small, the number of firms reduced by a larger percentage year on year from 5,062 to 4,654. Small firms with between 1 and 5 advisers are seeing the largest falls, which chimes with the findings of our recent research among advice firm owners and employees in conjunction with Octo Members.

The research looks at succession planning and highlights the need for greater support to prepare younger advisers to become tomorrow’s business owners. How we equip the next generation with the skills they need to succeed is an important question for the industry to answer if we want to maintain a robust and vibrant advice sector.

Platform updates

We’re continuing with platform development work and have made good progress on the introduction of an online journey for ad-hoc pension income requests. This will enable advisers to submit a request online with notifications and will allow for automated processing – getting money to your clients faster. With development now complete, we’ve moved into the business testing and readiness phase and aim to have this live in mid-Q4.

On the service front, a key focus this quarter has been on process automation. We’re pleased to announce the completion of work on automating the daily Secure Lifetime Income (SLI) file process. This automation eliminates manual intervention, ensuring faster and more accurate facilitation of SLI updates, while reducing the risk of data entry errors.

Additionally, we’re advancing our cloud migration for the phone system to strengthen business resilience, with a Q4 launch planned. This upgrade will allow us to introduce new features like a call-back option, along with enhanced call analysis and quality monitoring, helping us continuously improve our service.

Lastly, significant strides have been made in Salesforce workflow implementation throughout Q3. By unifying our back-office systems, we’ll enhance efficiency within our processing teams, allowing us to deliver more timely, insightful updates to our customers. By the end of Q4, this will also improve our ability to monitor and analyse incoming emails into the client services team, further supporting our service improvement initiatives.

There is certainly plenty going on, and it feels like we’re set for another action-packed quarter to the end of the year.

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[1] https://www.moneymarketing.co.uk/news/chancellor-set-to-scrap-plans-to-change-pensions-tax-relief/

[2] https://www.fca.org.uk/publications/calls-input/review-fca-requirements-following-introduction-consumer-duty

[3] https://www.fca.org.uk/data/retirement-income-market-data-2023-24

[4] https://www.fca.org.uk/publication/correspondence/portfolio-letter-advisers-intermediaries-2024.pdf

[5] https://www.fca.org.uk/data/retail-intermediary-market-2023