Standard Life has launched its new segregated portfolio technology, professional portfolio manager (PPM), designed to support advisory central investment proposition (CIP) management.
Most larger financial advice firms use a CIP as a system to provide investment advice, review existing and new investment solutions within the client’s prescribed asset allocation, and assess the risks involved in a single fund, a model portfolio or a bespoke discretionary portfolio.
Standard Life hopes its new service will enable its wrap advisers to be more efficient in these areas when serving their clients.
Benefits
The firm said that advisers using the system will benefit from:
- Trade stacking to manage issues between planning and investment processes;
- Mechanical rebalancing, enabling control of portfolio drift;
- The ability to avoid portfolio development through programmed rebalancing;
- The ability to exclude clients from a rebalance without detaching from the portfolio model;
- The ability to match portfolios to cash flows and target natural income;
- A regulatory risk package, including permission controls, maker/checker functionality and an audit trail with performance attribution; and
- Access to exchange-traded funds and exchange-traded vehicles.
Huge step forward
David Tiller, Standard Life recently appointed head of UK propositions said: “It is great to be able to launch something new for advisers.
“The professional portfolio manager helps deal with the multi-faceted challenge of delivering tightly controlled individual investment solutions in a scalable manner, while still being able to deal with the natural behaviours of clients.
This marks the beginning of a new wave of platform development, and indeed, of platform architecture itself.
“Advisers are telling us they are increasingly challenged by complex requirements of clients in retirement. This technology is a huge step forward.”
Tiller also said that the new technology will help advisers with issues surrounding the recently-acquired pension freedoms client book.