Platform re-registration - Snail or Cheetah speed?

SnowMan

I was wondering if anyone this year has tried to re-register investments from one platform (or direct holding) to another platform and how long it has taken, and how they have found the process? Re-registration is where investments are transferred 'as if', so the existing investments just move to the new platform, rather than the investments being sold by the outgoing platform and repurchased by the new platform.

On 31st December 2012 the FSA introduced a requirement for platforms to allow re-registration (in specie transfer) of investments (subject to the new platform offering the investments that were being re-registered, so for example the fund and class of unit) in a reasonable time and in an efficient manner. The platform (usually the outgoing one in practice) can make a reasonable charge for this.

'Reasonable time' is not defined. The FSA have said in section 4 of their August 2011 paper that they will look in their post-implementation RDR work at whether further prescriptive rules are required.

There seems to be an initiative through TISA to bring in an electronic process for re-registration. It is hard to find any information on when this will happen. At the moment most re-registrations seem to be paper based.

What are your experiences? Can anyone add any information as to what is happening here, for example in relation to the TISA initiative?

SnowMan

EXPERIENCE 1

I tried to re-register investments from Fidelity Fundsnetwork to TD Direct Investing at the end of December (Fidelity had told me they had brought in the new rules a few weeks earlier and were allowing re-registration away). After 4 weeks nothing had happened and after much chasing I found out from TD Direct that they had split my paperwork and sent it to 2 different departments who were trying to match up the paperwork and nothing had happened. By then TD Direct had announced new charges were coming in on their platform so I abandoned the re-registration.


EXPERIENCE 2

I am in the process of re-registering investments (about 6 accumulation OEICS so nothing complicated) from Fidelity Fundsnetwork and HSBC Global Investment Centre to Sippdeal. Almost 6 weeks since I requested this to happen very little has happened. After 3 weeks I contacted Fidelity Fundsnetwork and they had not even heard from Sippdeal that I wanted to re-register investments. Sippdeal have emailed me about 2 or 3 weeks ago to say they were contacting the platforms to see if funds could be re-registered; however I had already contacted Sippdeal before putting in the re-registration request to confirm that my particular funds (and classes of unit) could be re-registered which they told me they could. I have been given no indication how much longer the re-registration will take.

Thrupnybit

OH re-registering from Fidelity Funds Network to HL who said timescale would be 21-30 days. 27 days today and no movement. Letter from HL yesterday apologising for time this is taking and saying they are chasing.

Very frustrating as he plans rebalancing with some funds not available in Fidelity.

grizzly1911

I re-registerd one from Invesco into Cavendish/Fidelity less than one month.

I chose to transfer in a number of disparate direct ISAs selling and buying new choices, in the process. Again these took less than 4 weeks.

I have a couple in train for the wife but it is too early to tell although a cash swap has taken too long (6 weeks), that is the fault of the existing provider, not Cavendish, but I haven't been informed of any delay from Cavendish directly.

koru

I have done some reregistrations from Alliance Trust Savings to Interactive Investor. These took around two months.

I also did one from Cofunds (via Cavendish) to Interactive Investor. This took seven months and lots of chasing! Difficult to say whose fault it was, because Interactive Investor claimed that Cofunds kept losing the documentation and when I talked to Cavendish, they denied any knowledge of any transfer request. It really should have been very straightforward, because Interactive Investor is just a rebranded version of Cofunds.

donniej

The electronic process for re-registration through TISA is called TeX - it has its own website here:

Here is a list of members: http://www.tisaexchange.co.uk/list_of_members.html - most of the big players are listed. The difficulty is that not all members have actually implemented the protocol yet - and I can't see anywhere that says which members have.

I know that Skandia, FundsNetwork and Cofunds all have working implementations, so you should be able to use any of those with TeX. I'm not sure how long a TeX transfer would take, but it should be a matter of days rather than months as it is currently.

SnowMan

I actually contacted TeX/TISA exchange to ask what was happening re the electronic re-registration initiative and got this very helpful response from Carol Knight (Director)

You are likely to have read the various press releases on the TISA Exchange website which are to be found at: http://www.tisaexchange.co.uk/publication.html?type=11

These tend to be issued at points of change rather than as regular updates.

As you rightly say, the FSA mandated that re-registration of holdings had to be available from 1st Jan 2013 but they did not mandate using electronic messaging as the mechanism. TeX has been formed to facilitate that process. The terms of membership, including common service level agreements, do not take effect until 1 July 2013 because of the technology build requirements necessary although I do accept this time delay can feel frustrating. Some firms have indeed implemented this process already. But of course until the majority of providers are in the same position, those firms who are ahead of the timescales still have to interact with those who are not quite ready and so the full potential of speed cannot be utilised.

I take your point that members of the public are interested in progress in this initiative and will look at introducing an update section to provide greater levels of information

Meanwhile my re-registration from Fidelity Fundsnetwork to Sippdeal has taken almost 7 weeks so far and Sippdeal can't give me any indication of when it will happen but imply it will take some time yet. Fidelity are blaming Sippdeal and Sippdeal are blaming Fidelity.

Better news is that my re-registration from the HSBC Global Investment Centre to Sippdeal looks to be happening after just under 7 weeks (funds are showing in both HSBC and Sippdeal at the moment :rotfl:)

SnowMan

SnowMan wrote: »

I actually contacted TeX/TISA exchange to ask what was happening re the electronic re-registration initiative and got this very helpful response from Carol Knight (Director)


Meanwhile my re-registration from Fidelity Fundsnetwork to Sippdeal has taken almost 7 weeks so far and Sippdeal can't give me any indication of when it will happen but imply it will take some time yet. Fidelity are blaming Sippdeal and Sippdeal are blaming Fidelity.

Better news is that my re-registration from the HSBC Global Investment Centre to Sippdeal looks to be happening after just under 7 weeks (funds are showing in both HSBC and Sippdeal at the moment :rotfl:)

It's now 9 weeks since I requested re-registration of funds held on the HSBC GIC and Fidelity Fundsnetwork platforms to Sippdeal and neither transfer has been processed yet so the FSA (now FCA) rules requirement for timely re-registration is being blatantly ignored.

Funds show up in both my Fidelity Fundsnetwork and HSBC GIC accounts and in my Sippdeal account. In fact this duplication in relation to HSBC has been present for 2 weeks.

But when I spoke to Sippdeal today they say although funds are showing they haven't got the funds from either of the platforms and that the funds show up in their account only because it is part of the set-up process. When I spoke to to HSBC GIC yesterday they say the funds are now with Sippdeal.

So both HSBC GIC and Sippdeal say they haven't got my funds so in a way my funds are somewhere in the ether.

Nobody can give me any timescale as to when it will all be resolved.

SnowMan

It is 10 weeks tomorrow since I requested the re-registration of my investments from Fidelity Fundsnetwork and HSBC Global Investment Centre to Sippdeal. Neither has completed yet.

Made my usual weekly calls to Sippdeal, Fidelity and HSBC GIC to find out what the latest delay was.

My funds have disappeared from my HSBC GIC account. However Sippdeal don't have the funds so the funds are still in the ether. I am hoping that the re-registration will complete in the next few days.

The Fidelity Fundsnetwork to Sippdeal re-registation is still ongoing with no obvious end. I am told Fidelity are contacting HSBC (the fund manager for all my funds) to ask them to re-register but this is likely to take 2 weeks possibly more, as although the request is usually processed in 48 hours it is then confirmed by snail mail which can take a further 7 working days. It is not clear if this completes the re-registration process or if further delays follow this.

So it is looking like it will take over 3 months to re-register my funds from Fidelity to Sippdeal which is anything but 'timely'.

These delays are stopping me from converting my funds to clean share classes so the timely re-registation failure is costing me money. At least HSBC GIC and Fidelity don't charge for re-registration away.


An interesting general development is that TISA are consulting on re-registering and conversion to clean class of the same fund happening at the same time rather than as separate processes see this article. That seems a good move from an investor perspective. However my feel is that the more expensive platforms, who are trying to put barriers in the way of re-registration will behind the scenes stop this from happening (they have an incentive to stop investors moving to cheaper competitors).

Until the FCA puts a fixed timescale for re-registration to take place (rather than require it be done in a 'timely' way), and until sensible monetary limits are put on what can be charged for re-registration then in reality re-registration of investments is going to continue to be difficult and in many cases very costly for investors.


Is anyone else having a good or bad experience in trying to re-register?

SnowMan

Have been waiting nearly 11 weeks for my registration of funds held on the Fidelity Fundsnetwork platform to Sippdeal.

Now being told that the next part of the process is for the fund manager (HSBC for all the funds) to change the name of the nominee company on their register and this could take another 30 days. And that isn't the end of the process

So I could be looking at 4 months + to re-register. And then there is the separate process of conversion to clean classes and goodness knows how long that will take

Just hope there is something in the FCA platform paper (which is being reported as coming out on 29th April) to set timescales for timely re-registration.

talexuser

To me your sorry story seems quite typical of regulators set up and paid for by us for the public relations purpose of helping the consumer, doing pretty much the opposite by bending over backwards to the lobbying and vested interests of the businesses they are meant to police. "In a timely manner" is so meaningless as to be useless to hold anyone to account.