May 2024
Business updates
James Hay updates
Nucleus wrap updates
Events
News archive
Welcome to Illuminate News
As Greek philosopher Heraclitus famously stated, the only constant in life is change. At Nucleus, we’re committed to adapting to change and tailoring our services to meet the evolving needs of our clients.
That’s why we’re pleased to reach an agreement (subject to approval) in February to acquire Third Financial, one of the fastest growing investment platform and software providers in the UK. This will enable us to offer an enhanced 'adviser-as-platform' proposition.
The acquisition will allow us to support those looking for this depth of control, as part of our wider ambition to do everything we can to help advisers make retirement more rewarding for their clients.
What else is new?
In response to the ever-changing legislative environment, our technical team has been continuing to identify opportunities for you to deliver better outcomes for your clients and share best practice for running successful businesses. Illuminate Technical | Nucleus Financial
We’ve also been using our position to champion the creation of an independent commission dedicated to long-term savings strategies. This follows our inaugural UK Retirement Confidence Index which found that only 16% of UK adults are ‘totally confident’ they have enough money to retire on comfortably. It's more important than ever for people to feel confident about their financial future, and we hope this is the first step towards significant change.
These developments represent just a snapshot of the changes that have unfolded so far this year. For more details, please take a look at our business updates section.
As always, please get in touch if there’s anything you’d like to discuss – we’re always keen to get your feedback.
Richard Rowney
Chief Executive Officer
In this issue of Illuminate News...
Illuminate Hub
Staying ahead of ever-changing regulatory and legislative changes is as complex as ever. To help you navigate this we’ve recently realigned our Illuminate hub to give you direct access to everything you need to be fully prepared.
The hub now includes expert blog articles through Illuminate Insight, up-to-the-minute technical support through Illuminate Technical and the latest on our events calendar through Illuminate Live. There’s a host of information to help you to help your clients, including guidance in respect of the LTA abolition.
You can also contribute to the conversation by sharing your own thought leadership pieces through Illuminate insight. Please get in touch communications@nucleusfinancial.com if you have a topic to share.
Technical updates
The abolition of the Lifetime Allowance (LTA)
The abolition of the LTA is one of the biggest changes to the pension tax rules in a decade. The LTA was abolished on 6 April 2024, with new allowances and transitional rules coming into effect.
Andrew Tully, our Technical Services Director, has written a Tech Talk on the LTA abolishment and the new allowances that have been introduced, with examples of how these new rules will work in practice.
Barry Foster, our Technical Sales Manager, also examined the key changes in last month’s webinar, looking at the potential impact on clients and outlining the actions you need to take.
We’ve updated our factsheets on the Lifetime Allowance, replacing the two current factsheets with one that outlines the new allowances coming into effect: Lump Sum Allowance, Lump Sum and Death Benefit Allowance, and the Overseas Transfer Allowance.
Are ISAs becoming too complex?
The Spring Budget had thankfully little on pensions and focused to a large degree on investment in the UK as well as some tax cuts. What does this mean for you? Andrew has created a helpful guide.
Tax and regulation in 2024: navigating the new rules
Julia Peake, our newly appointed Technical Manager, opened our Spring webinar series with a comprehensive breakdown of this year’s pivotal shifts in National Insurance, Capital Gains Tax, Dividend tax allowances, and ISA rules.
She also covered the FCA’s review of the Advice Guidance Boundary, its thematic review of retirement income advice, and the proposals to introduce a ‘pot for life’.
Tax Year start
We hope you found the support available through our Tax Year End hub useful this year – we had an overwhelmingly positive response to it, but we’re always looking for ways to improve.
To share your thoughts or suggestions please email us communications@nucleusfinancial.com.
With the start of the new tax year underway, the updated declarations and applications are now accessible on the platform.
Julia Peake appointed to strengthen Technical Services team
Julia joins from Canada Life where she was a technical specialist for three years, and previously worked for Sanlam. Reporting to Andy Tully, Technical Services Director, Julia will support our users on all matters technical and help to shape the group’s overall proposition.
Award-winning service
Our commitment to service quality and operational improvement was recognised at the UK Contact Centre Forum national awards in November where we were delighted to be awarded:
- Gold for Small Contact Centre of the Year (James Hay)
- Bronze for Medium Contact Centre of the Year (Nucleus Wrap)
- Gold for Improvement Strategy of the Year (Nuquest Operations Change Framework)
- Gold for Complaints Team of the Year (Nucleus Group)
These awards highlight the successful impact of the extensive service excellence training our operational and service teams have undertaken over the past year.
5-2024
Interest payments reinstated on EQi dealing accounts
EQi is resuming interest payments on cash balances within dealing accounts. Clients holding James Hay SIPPs, ISAs, GIAs, and Wrap products will benefit from this change.
For more detailed information regarding this update, clients are advised to check their EQi portal for a secure message that has been sent to them.
James Hay receives record Trustpilot score
We're pleased to share that James Hay has achieved a Trustpilot review score of 3.9 at the end of April.
While we recognise these scores are only one facet of our overall adviser and customer satisfaction, they stand as a testament to the dedication and hard work of our service teams in enhancing our support and care for both advisers and clients.
Improvements to your clients' platform cash for James Hay
Fee scrapped: From 1 February, we no longer charge a platform fee for cash holdings – in effect a price cut for those with cash on the platform.
Better options for cash investments for your clients: Investment platforms like ours provide access to a wide range of different investment types, ideal for those with long-term financial goals. We also allow our customers to hold cash balances to help with the payment of adviser and service fees and charges, or to act as a temporary haven when the markets are volatile.
At the end of March 2024, we paid 2.5% interest on platform cash.
We don’t recommend that your clients hold large balances of cash for long periods of time, but if they want their spare cash to work harder in the medium to long term, we offer access to specific products with attractive rates of return via our Cash Panel.
You can find out more about our cash panels on our website.
Streamlining transfers
We’re actively seeking and evaluating opportunities to enhance the transfer-out process and overall customer experience. We’ve made a number of positive changes, including:
- A temporary waiver of service fees for James Hay* customers until the transition to the new platform is complete.
- We're in the process of setting up new specialised teams for in specie transfer cases to improve outbound communications
*Exceptions apply, including cases involving commercial property assets and the IPS book, due to the inherent variability in timelines and distinct processes required.
We’ll let you know of further developments as we progress through the feasibility stage of these improvements.
You said, we did
Thank you for your feedback so far this year. Here's how we've responded to it...
You said..
We did..
Tax reporting isn't as easy as it could be.
We’ve added a new ‘Reporting date’ column to the platform’s transaction history and to Nucleus Go. The reporting date is the date a client receives funds into their bank account, and the date a transaction is reported to HMRC. To reflect this change, we've updated our Transactions user guide which can be found in the user guide section of the platform library.
Public holidays can affect trading and when settlements complete, but it’s hard to keep track.
We created a calendar for 2024 that shows when non-business days are occurring in certain countries throughout the year.
There is a risk of top up money being applied to the wrong pending application, which could lead to the wrong asset investments being made.
2024 releases
On 30 March, we deployed R22, our second release of 2024. This ensured compliance with the new tax year and the abolishment of the LTA.
Other features of the release include:
Marking ISA top ups quicker and easier
We’ve removed the ISA top up blocker (for UK clients only) which means that clients will no longer need to send us an updated client declaration if there’s been a break in ISA subscriptions.
Better control of tax-free allowance
Clients who make withdrawals from their flexi ISA to cover adviser ongoing fees, ad hoc fees, account closure, or DFM fees can now replace those withdrawals within the same tax year, ensuring they don't miss out on their tax-free allowance.
(Please note that initial fees are not included in this enhancement.)
Improved fraud prevention
Client bank details (safely obscured) will now be included in client welcome letters. This is part of our ongoing work to safeguard your clients against fraud.
Seamless pension payments
We've updated our phased drawdown logic, enhancing the reliability of our disinvestment process. This improvement significantly lowers the risk of delays, ensuring your clients receive their pension payments promptly and efficiently.
Wesleyan With Profits Growth fund
In response to demand for those wanting to include profit funds as part of their centralised investment propositions, last year we added the Wesleyan With Profits Growth fund to the platform. You can find out more here.
Improvements to your clients’ platform cash on Nucleus Wrap
From 1 March, we no longer charge a platform fee for cash holdings – in effect a price cut for those with cash on the platform.
Better options for cash investments for your clients: Investment platforms like ours provide access to a wide range of different investment types, ideal for those with long-term financial goals. We also allow our customers to hold cash balances to help with the payment of adviser and service fees and charges, or to act as a temporary haven when the markets are volatile.
In Q4 2023 we paid 3% interest on platform cash.
We don’t recommend that your clients hold large balances of cash for long periods of time, but if they want their spare cash to work harder in the medium to long term, we offer access to specific products with attractive rates of return via our Cash Panel.
We recently added Bondsmith, which supports a range of fixed-term deposit accounts with attractive interest rates from banks and building societies and a low minimum deposit.
Client address record: please remember!
It’s important that we hold your clients’ home address on our records. This is required for Anti-Money Laundering and FCA regulatory requirements regarding issuing client correspondence.
Correspondence should always be sent direct to customers at their home address but if you’re adding a correspondence address, which is not the home address, this can’t be your firm’s address. We can accept the address of a Power of Attorney or a Court appointed Deputy. For any other correspondence address questions, please contact your Client Relations Manager.
5-2024
Illuminate Live virtual events
If you weren't able to join our March roadshow in person, or you'd like to hear one of the sessions again, you can catch up with each of the topics online.
We were joined by two of Nucleus' technical team covering all you need to know about the latest regulatory changes to pensions and tax, their impact and what you'll need to consider to continue delivering good client outcomes.
We also welcomed Simon Greenman, Best Practice AI, to explore the importance and benefit of artificial intelligence to businesses.
Recordings of all sessions that have already taken place are now available to watch on demand.
5-2024