The Challenge
Punter Southall, ranked as one of the UK’s top 100 financial advisers by FTAdviser, provides financial planning and personalised guidance services to its clients.
To meet the advice gap and help more people make better decisions with their retirement savings , it launched Pension Potential.,
Pension Potential provides an annuity comparison tool to help people maximise their retirement savings. The web tool lays out every annuity on the market on an individualised basis and savers can see in seconds what a guaranteed income in retirement means for them.
To complement its guidance service and to help more people achieve a better retirement it is launching a digital hybrid ‘At Retirement’ advice service. However, to provide its clients with the right financial service, they first needed to navigate the manual and time-consuming Letter of Authority process which they described as like something from the era of Dickens in the digital age.
The Solution
When reviewing digital LoA solutions, a pre-requisite was the solution be presented within the Pension Potential online client journey. The vision was for a seamless experience, which did not need to take the client out of the experience to complete the Letter of Authority request.
This was achieved by expanding Pension Lab’s API capability to allow Letter of Authority requests to be completed securely in any third-party interface. This included the connections required to submit requests, along with the return of data to support client experience, such as provider specific estimated time to delivery.
Punter Southall also have access to the Adviser View, which includes a letter of authority tracker, providing them with full oversight of all ongoing LoA activity.
Pension Lab’s digital LoA solution eliminates paper and post and the need for wet signatures by leveraging technology for. It also provides a single digital signature point, guaranteed delivery to the correct provider processing team, dynamic provider chasing and real-time progress updates on a user-friendly dashboard.
The Benefits
During an initial trial period, Punter Southall saw dramatic time reductions compared to standard LoA processes including a “same day LoA”, which was previously unheard of.
This was as a result of LoAs being automatically sent and followed up at the optimal time for each provider and having a better understanding of estimated times to completion which are dynamic to each provider.
By speeding up the time it takes from a client making initial contact through to the provision of financial services suited to their individual needs, they are able to provide the personalised client service that Punter Southall is known for.
“The Pension Lab LoA service has been a gamechanger, it has removed all paper handling from the LoA process and enables our Planners to get the information they need to help our clients. Efficient services like Pension Lab lower the cost of providing advice, meaning that we can help more people and make financial advice more accessible.”
Steve Butler, CEO Punter Southall Financial Services Division
Working for your business.
Our Letter of Authority clients range from large pension providers to individual financial advisers. Whether you aim to integrate the solution into your offering or prefer access to a branded Letter of Authority portal that demands no development work, we have a customisable solution to meet your needs.