It’s been a busy 2025 so far here at Seccl. We’re handling a growing volume of transactions and shipping new features and improvements faster than ever. (If you haven’t already, check out our half year development review and sign up to our live update webinar to see what we’ve been up to.)
One area we’ve been especially focused on is asset transfers. For anyone even remotely familiar with the process (including anyone who’s ever tried to move assets from one investment platform to another), the reasons are obvious.
While financial advisers do a great job shielding clients from the worst of it, the fact remains: too much of the transfer journey is slow, inconsistent and stubbornly manual. According to FT Adviser, platform-to-platform transfers can still take up to 12 months, creating unnecessary stress for customers and wasting valuable adviser time.
In a world of one-click convenience, asking customers to chase paperwork or wait weeks to move their own money feels totally out of step with the fast and seamless digital experience they rightly expect.
And it’s not just inconvenient. It undermines trust, delays investment decisions, and discourages people from switching to better providers. None of which sounds very Consumer Dutyish…
It’s why we’re committed to doing everything in our power to improve the process. It’s taken some hard yards and first principles thinking. While we’re certainly not done yet, the progress is clear: our transfer times have improved dramatically across the board, with some now completing in as little as 24 hours – a pace that far outstrips industry norms. And this is all despite a 66% increase in transfer volumes.
Let’s take a closer look at what we’ve been doing …
Genuine straight-through processing
For a start, we make sure electronic transfers are exactly that: electronic – without a single bit of human involvement.
Like the vast majority of the market, we integrate with Origo and equisoft/transfer (formerly Altus Transfer Gateway, or ‘ATG’).
But customers have told us that many providers still manually key transfers to those systems in the first place. It’s an unnecessary step that can add anywhere from 30 minutes to 48 hours delay per transfer, before the process has really even begun.
For our part, we make sure transfer requests are submitted instantly – with no manual processing and zero delays.
Manual, but as smooth as digital
But while electronic transfers are one thing, manual transfers are another entirely. When ceding schemes need supporting paperwork to release funds, things can often grind to a halt.
Our new manual transfer journey is designed to be as simple and streamlined as the fully electronic one. No more back and forth with customer service tickets, or endless waiting for information from ceding providers – it’s a ‘submit-and-forget’ process. And it’s already delivering results: manual cash transfers are now nearly 30% faster, and firms are seeing fewer frustrating rejections.
By surfacing ceding provider document and signature requirements right at the start, we’ve made sure our clients’ platform operations users know exactly what’s needed from the outset and can submit everything in one go.
Once submitted, transfers can be tracked end-to-end in our Transfers Dashboard – giving users full visibility without the need to chase. In most cases, we find users don’t need to raise a customer service ticket at all.
A simpler, smoother transfers flow
The increasing speed of transfers managed through Seccl is powered in part by a reimagined transfer flow that keeps everything in one place.
Users can now submit both manual and electronic instructions directly through our Professional Portal or the API. Built-in validation ensures fewer errors. Payments, fees and re-registrations are all handled automatically. And everything stays within a single, streamlined experience. We’ve also added support for partial SIPP cash transfers via the portal – removing yet another layer of manual admin.
And our customers are already seeing the impact. In the words of one investment platform administrator: “Going from previous experience with this particular ceding scheme, requests have always had to be raised manually via Zendesk and have taken weeks, if not months – so this is a massive improvement.”
Better rejection handling and smarter workflows.
Transfer rejections are frustrating – especially when the reasons are unclear. With around 30% of industry transfer requests rejected by ceding providers, we’ve made it our mission to overhaul this process. So we’ve standardised our rejection process and improved the detail behind our rejection codes, giving firms more actionable insight when things don’t go to plan.
With clearer information, firms can now automate workflows, refine their validation rules, guide clients more effectively and resubmit transfers faster.
We’ve also introduced the ability to clone and resubmit rejected transfers, removing the burden of re-keying for operations teams.
Our enhanced transfers MI now shows both transfer progress and our chasing activity (so that firms can spot bottlenecks earlier and take action sooner), while our automated email chasing helps to keep in-flight transfers moving, without any human input required.
Looking ahead
Together, these changes reflect our commitment to simplifying the transfer experience for everyone. And while we’ve made some great progress, this is only the beginning.
Fixing transfers won’t happen overnight. But step by step, feature by feature, we’re making it faster, more transparent, and easier for firms – so together we can help more people invest, and invest well.
There’s more coming soon as part of our next wave of transfer improvements – and we’ll be discussing these (and more) in our webinar next week. We’d love to see you there.