Case Studies

Hargreave Hale - Outsource Imago Front and Back Office Services

Solutions

Growth of the SIPP market
The pensions industry in the UK is the second largest in the world after the US, with assets totalling over £260bn in personal pensions. Introduced in the early 90s the Self Invested Personal Pension (SIPP) market has grown year on year so that there are now over 500,000 plans in force. On going annual growth is predicted at a conservative rate of around 20%.
New market entrants

With SIPP becoming the pension scheme of choice for most middle and higher income investors, new entrants have been plentiful to service this burgeoning market. The choice of SIPP now ranges beyond specialist SIPP providers to insurance companies, banks, wealth managers, stock brokers and wrap platforms, that service the market either directly to the consumer or through an intermediary.

The business challenge
SIPPs are now a mainstream pension product, however they are still perceived to be complex products which are difficult and expensive to administer. This is made more so for new entrants to market who have a set of unique challenges including:

• how to administer comparatively small numbers at an acceptable cost
• how to de-risk a complex SIPP environment and service
• how to keep abreast of legislative and market changes
• how to interface to existing investment management and other IT systems
• how to maintain client service and control.

Hargreave Hale
London and Blackpool based Hargreave Hale stockbrokers and investment managers entered the market in 2008, with the intention to satisfy client demand for SIPPs. Providing a SIPP for Hargreave Hale has meant that client retention and assets under management have increased, whilst providing their clients maximum flexibility and choice without having to setup and maintain an administrative overhead and infrastructure themselves.

Hargreave Hale came to Dunstan Thomas to provide a SIPP administration service delivered through their Imago SIPP administration platform. Imago comprises all the functionality for front and back office SIPP administration activities. With Imago’s modern technology Imago interfaces readily to investment administration, third party and in-house IT systems.

Imago is linked to Hargreave Hale via a web portal. Daily activities and transactions include new business, asset transfers, bank files, payroll and updates for Hargreave Hale’s, Investmaster investment management system. Hargreave Hale maintains the client and FSA relationship even though documentation and data are generated by Imago. At year end, Imago produces all the relevant documents including, benefit statements, SMPI reports and reporting to the FSA and HMRC returns.

Imago and the Dunstan Thomas service has meant Hargreave Hale have been able to come to market with SIPP that is cost effective, flexible and future proofed, to create a unique market proposition within the private client stock broking community.

Stuart Brookes, Director of Hargreave Hale says of the service “the offering has exceeded our initial expectations both in terms of systems and knowledge of Dunstan Thomas staff”.

Chris Read, Chairman of Dunstan Thomas says “Hargreave Hale represent a new way to interact with our clients. It has always seemed natural to us that we should not only develop software for our clients but we should also deliver service to our clients using our own software on their behalf. For us the Hargreave Hale services represent a natural progression for the company and we look forward to delivering the service to many more.”