TIPS

Introduction

Introduction

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Introduction

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TIPS (Totally Integrated Practice Solution) is the most comprehensive practice software for IFAs available in the market place.

 

Developed by IFAs for IFAs, integrating all aspects of an IFA's firm procedures in one package means that:

 

your service to clients can improve
your costs are reduced
administrative burdens are simplified.

 

 


 

"So, what has changed that means you need to rethink the MI you should be collecting in quite such depth? It is the disappearance of commission and its replacement by adviser charging. Once upon a time you could depend on product providers to tell you what business you had done: the types of contract, the providers, how much you earned. Now you cannot depend on providers or platforms to the same extent. The information is coming in differently and needs collecting and collating."

Money Marketing 8 January 2015 : Danby Bloch: Getting it right on management information

 

TIPS was designed as your very own Platform! By this, we mean that everything you require to run an IFA practice is included in the software. We know the advantages of using a single platform or wrap (such as Cofunds or Transact) but this may or may not satisfy the FCA definition of Independence and therein lies the problem. No one platform can accommodate all your clients' needs or policies in an ever more complex world.

Moreover, platforms do not help with accounts or compliance per se. They don't aid your compliance or give you full MI concerning the whole business. So most IFA firms use some form of back office system for these functions be that a commercial system or in-house developed solutions.

So at this point, the back office system has become separated from the platform or platforms that you may use or indeed any provider that you do business with. Your back office system may have tenuous links to providers (such as automatic valuations or commission downloads) but these are done on a case by case basis. Now, for example, you do not have a single description of base asset classes that you can use across all platforms and providers nor does the automatic commission download necessarily reflect your business model.

TIPS was designed to integrate a back office system with your very own platform functionality. In other words, once you have configured TIPS to match your firm's core working practices, you become independent of any platform or provider and yet offer all those aspects that the better platforms provide. What's more, you have no need of external accounts software, suitability report writers, risk profilers, asset allocation models, portfolio builders, document management software etc.

 

Here are just some areas that TIPS can handle:

1.Post RDR, fees are paid by the client for defined services. The payment may be from the provider if the client has agreed it or it may come from the client directly. Suppose you are charging 0.5% of the FUM as a fee and that is collected by one or more providers (CAR). It may be that this is no longer directly associated with a policy or policies in that the fee may be deducted from just one policy or come from a cash account. Moreover, the monies received may relate to any service agreed with the client such as IHT or taxation advice. You really need to gather the monies and set them against a real or virtual invoice detailing the work that has been paid for. This may directly effect your FCA or PI fees and your overall VAT position.
2.Suppose your client has investments on two different platforms, together with two pensions with other providers and a With Profit Bond. Each of these five plans will have an underlying asset description given by each provider depending on their choice as to how to describe each of their funds. They may not be the same! How can you give the client an overall asset breakdown or match the WHOLE portfolio to their attitude to risk? TIPS enables you to describe all investments in a set of asset classes defined by you and to map those asset classes to different asset breakdowns from each provider.
3.How many different Word and Excel templates do you use? TIPS gathers all your templates into one place and each template is linked to data that you already have. No repeat entries, no cut and paste and less errors. Design your own templates, import your Word documents and choose from hundreds of themes for uniform document appearances across the whole firm.