INTRODUCTION
Dear Adviser,
Welcome to May’s Adviser Update. The last couple of months have been a busy period with many of our people working overtime to ensure work is completed within the tax year. As usual, lessons learned inform our approach into the new tax year. I hope you were able to benefit from our tax year end support, and it was a successful period for your business.
We have recently been voted top for ‘overall satisfaction’ and ‘net promoter score’ across all platforms, in an important survey of advisers by research firm Investment Trends. Net Promoter Score or ‘NPS’ is a measure of how likely advisers are to recommend a business: thank you for your ongoing support. It’s great to get positive feedback but we want to do a lot more. Our digitalisation and integration programmes continue to deliver regular improvements through monthly TOL releases and more integrations with adviser software providers. I am particularly excited about our account opening API released this month.
I would like to dedicate the core of this introduction to cyber security. Over the past weeks, you will have read about the cyber attacks at UK retailers including M&S, Co-Op and Harrods. These cyber criminals operate sophisticated phishing and social engineering techniques. It is critical we all take the right precautions to protect our login details to our corporate networks and online services. Cyber criminals continue to target financial services including platforms, advisers and investors. We have announced previously that we are making multi-factor authentication (MFA) compulsory for advisers in September, but I wanted to share more details on why this is so important.
Cyber criminals want your adviser login details to Transact. As you know, it is hard to steal client money because bank accounts must be verified in the client name. However, with adviser login details, criminals can immediately download personal client data in bulk or place client trades to commit financial crimes. The best way to mitigate this risk is to adopt MFA and to use secure password managers, such as Google and Microsoft Authenticators. MFA greatly improves our ability to limit exposure to account compromise, even if your username and password have been captured or stolen. In the past, some advisers may have shared login details, but this practice is extremely high risk and must not continue. It is putting you, your clients and Transact at risk. We are aware compulsory MFA can feel like a frustrating change which is making financial planning harder not easier, but we must collectively evolve to respond to cyber risks and protect our clients and our businesses.
The National Cyber Security Council has published guidance that all firms are advised to follow, which you can read more about here.
Moving beyond cyber, we continue to increase the profile of our technical financial planning support. This month our technical articles focus on pensions and gifting. I encourage you to read them and to make the most of the technical support available to you:
- Increase to Normal Minimum Pension Age in article 7.
- Annual Limit for Pension Contributions in article 8.
- A study in gifting – the challenge of large-scale wealth transfer in article 9.
Please call our direct technical line if you want to discuss any of these articles in more detail on (020) 7608 5330 or email technical_direct@integrafin.co.uk.
Thank you to everyone who came to our Connect event on 7 May in Birmingham. Our next event is in Leeds on 4 June, you can register here. Our smaller more personal breakfast events are a good way to meet your regional BDM and ASM, as well as other advisers in your local area. A full list of events and joining instructions can be found here. Please do join us!
Lastly, we are making some tweaks to our branding to modernise the look and feel. We are not changing our logo, other than temporarily to highlight 25 years of Transact! Further updates to our documentation and forms will follow later in the year.
Kind regards,
Tom Dunbar
Chief Executive Officer
1. Introduction
2. Transact Online (TOL) – Recent enhancements
3. Integrations – Account opening API
4. Optimising service
5. Successions planning update – Don’t keep kicking the can down the road
6. Transact – BlackRock MPS update
7. Increase to normal minimum pension age
8. Annual limit for pension contributions
9. A study in gifting – the challenge of large-scale wealth transfer
10. Investment Trends UK Adviser Technology & Business Report results
11. Interest on cash
12. Transact events 2025