Thistle launches migration tool with in-built compliance to help financial advisers accelerate platform switching
With over a third of financial advisers in the United Kingdom having changed one or more of their preferred platforms in 2023, and compliance burden the toughest challenge for over 80% of advisers, wealth management firms will continue the quest for quality service and adaptable technology in 2025.
“Significant generational shifts in client demographics and expectations, consolidation in the adviser sector, and the entrance of disruptors eroding margins, as well as a taxing regulatory and compliance framework, are pushing advisers to review their propositions and accelerate automation in their practices”, says Tom Dudley, Investments Partner at Thistle Initiatives. “We expect a continued trend in migration between platform providers in 2025, however financial advisers are still put off by the effort and client disruption involved in switching providers, despite such moves helping deliver better outcomes for clients and in some instances helping avoid a foreseeable harm - significant considerations in a new consumer duty world”.
Drawing on our extensive experience of working with financial advisers and the deep knowledge of our team of seasoned industry experts, who have built and run platform businesses, Thistle Initiatives together with WealthTech Pros have created an industry-first asset migration tool which utilises unique client batching logic on top of data extraction and augmentation capabilities. To complement this, we provide project management and expertise to ensure compliant client communications and end-to-end migration journeys.
Our Asset Migration tool enables financial advisers and wealth management firms to accelerate asset migration across platforms, while maintaining data accuracy and minimising client disruption. The integrated suite of project management and compliance services enables advice firms to define the client ‘cohorts’ eligible for transfer, using customised layers of logic and decisioning, and to transfer data to the target platform to create accounts and generate client disclosures.
Based on our extensive acquired knowledge of the industry, and the understanding of the underlying capability of providers, and above all the needs of the advice firm and their clients, the Asset Migration Tool operates in between the extremes of single client-by-client transfers and bulk migration, by putting similar clients into batches. This produces operational playbooks for each client batch or “cohort”, resulting in automated migration workflows that reduce manual intervention and significantly compress migration timeframes.
With capabilities including advanced data augmentation and mapping capabilities, secure API integrations, real-time progress monitoring and automated validation checks, our Asset Migration Tool helps financial advisers cut migration time significantly, with large scale multi-platform asset transfers typically completed in under 6 months (versus industry standards ranging between 18-36 months), and smaller single platform projects in 8 weeks (versus 14-16 weeks industry standards).
“We’ve seen platform-led solutions and companies offer top-level data analysis, but this only looks at one part of the problem and doesn’t go deep enough. We offer an end-to-end solution provided by market experts which utilises deep industry knowledge in our data sorting and offers independently validated compliant client journeys. With Dave Howard we have developed the first industrial strength solution”, says Tom Dudley, Investments Partner at Thistle Initiatives.
“We have developed a solution which draws upon our decades of platform technology and compliance experience. This has resulted in a unique data discovery, analysis and migration design tool, wrapped around a suite of compliance and project management services. Ultimately, this moves assets in a repeatable, predictable way in unprecedented timescales”, adds Dave Howard, Technical Consultant at Thistle Initiatives.