Wraps and funds to pilot re-registration in summer

Wraps and fund managers will begin working on a pilot for in-specie re-registration this summer in a boost for advisers and clients locked into platforms.

Advisers could be able to transfer assets between platforms in the first quarter of 2011 if the pilot was successful and legal hurdles can be cleared.

Transact and Ascentric have called for platforms to go further and start in-specie re-registration this year even if it means handling claims manually. Ascentric chief executive Hugo Thorman proposed a 20-day standard for re-registration requests from September.

‘We need to have a date when everyone will accept transfers,’ Thorman (pictured) said at a Cofunds round-table on re-registration. ‘If we want to get good at this by [2012] then we need to start now.’

Cofunds and FundsNetwork said this would not be possible while transfers were processed manually. ‘We can agree [but] it is getting the 100 plus fund mangers to do it as well,’ said Ed Dymott, FundsNetwork head of UK fund partners.

Tisa could have removed one major barrier by calling for the fund management industry to adopt a single low-cost messaging network, Swift. The Financial Services Authority has demanded that platforms allow in-specie re-registration by the RDR deadline in 2012 even without an automated solution.