News - Press Release

June 2nd 2009

Institutional heavyweights come together to launch cost efficient legacy asset migration service

Legacy Asset Systems Limited (LAS) was formally launched today to enable fully compliant end-to-end legacy asset migration for financial advisers. LAS brings together a unique combination of skill sets from different firms which together will offer the technology and expertise to provide a largely automated end-to-end process.

Stan Kirk, head of product development, LAS, explains: “By providing a complete client change management process, with joined up support tools and services that turn all of the daily obstacles into stepping stones, we can help IFAs on the journey to becoming New Model Advisers. This can be achieved by transforming their back books of business to conform with their new investment client proposition in a relatively short space of time.”

LAS has been established following recognition that there is a significant opportunity for migration of up to £2 trillion of legacy assets held in underperforming and largely inactive, normally equity-based funds into wrap platforms and other contemporary investment solutions. LAS can show that the payback period for advisers using their end-to-end legacy asset migration service will be as little as three months and no more than 12 months.


Transfers have become very big business as advisors seek to modernise their business practices and take advantage of the latest products. Ever since the first wrap launched nine years ago it has been clear that the key to transforming the adviser business model is to engage with a systematic and compliant process for transferring existing clients with a collection of legacy products. This involves a variety of skills and services including processes which scan thousands of old client records to find potentially suitable cases, an accurate ‘before and after’ cost comparison and skillful explanation in client specific suitability reports. Depending on the circumstances, up to 50% of clients can be suitable for transfer.

The importance of remaining compliant during asset migration activity was highlighted in the FSA’s Thematic Review of Pension Switching Advice, published in December 2008. This study found that:

• 16% of all pension transfers reviewed offered unsuitable advice
• 25% of firms failed with more than a third of all their cases
• 79% of cases failed because there was an unjustified extra cost, and in:
• 26% of cases the adviser failed to ascertain if the new product was more expensive.

Bryan Beeston, managing director, LAS, comments:
“Until now, nobody has offered an independent joined up service which brings all the necessary elements together. The market is rife with poor transfer practices, particularly in relation to methods of cost comparison, as the FSA has discovered with their current thematic review of Pension Transfers. Frankly the same applies to all other product transfers, not just Pensions”

LAS provides adviser firms with support, advice and systems which enable them to systematically sift all existing clients, using the expertise of the company’s founding shareholders. Starting with the institutional data expertise of ITM (Independent Transition Management), LAS will then use Dunstan Thomas’ calculation engines to calculate client-specific cost comparisons which will feed into suitability reports designed by specialist Paraplanners, The TimeBank. LAS also offers further bespoke outsourced Paraplanning service through The TimeBank for more complex cases saving time and underpinning the compliant process.

The founding shareholders of LAS are:

• Stanley Kirk – technology consultant and wrap specialist

• Andrew Smith - former chief executive of Hambro Fraser Smith and now Investment Services Director at Succession Advisory Services

• Steven Weiss - former chairman of the Regent Group of Companies, the IFA, Actuarial and Processing systems firm

• Bryan Beeston - founder and director of Millfield and, most recently, managing director of Clients Reunited

• Independent Transition Management (ITM) – the data management and IT consulting firm

• Dunstan Thomas – the pensions administration software provider and calculation engines specialist

• The Timebank – the outsourced paraplanning service company