Sell and Withdraw: Delivering cash in a single step

Making it easy to get cash to clients is just the latest step in building a seamless platform service, as Gavin Hughes, Head of Digital Delivery at M&G Wealth Platform, explains.

Hi Gavin – making the platform as seamless and easy to use as possible has been a major priority over the past year or so, hasn’t it?

Yes, we know how important it is – especially with the advent of Consumer Duty – for firms to be able to act promptly and efficiently for clients. So, we’ve been doing lots to make platform tasks and journeys as frictionless as possible – from the introduction of e-signatures and our fully Digital SIPP earlier this year to generally looking at the whole user platform experience to see where we can cut out unnecessary steps and duplication of information – such as introducing a simultaneous Quote and Apply tool for SIPPs. 

What is Sell & Withdraw?

It’s a simple feature we’ve introduced on the M&G Wealth Platform. When an adviser makes an ad-hoc request to sell holdings, we’ve enhanced the functionality so that money can be paid straight to the client’s bank account as soon as it is available.  Previously you needed to give us two instructions – firstly to sell and secondly to transfer cash to the client’s bank account. Now you only have to give us one instruction to sell and then transfer the cash to your client.

Which products is it available on?

ISAs and General Investment Accounts (GIAs). These are two products on which clients are particularly active in taking money in and out. So, it is proving to be a welcome feature for those clients and their advisers.

Sounds like a useful and time-saving feature

Yes – it means money can go straight into the client’s bank account as soon as a sale has settled. So, advisers don’t need to check if a sale has gone through before requesting a withdrawal.

Clients get their money quickly; that could be the next business day, depending on the timing of the request and the liquidity of the underlying holdings.

How much can be withdrawn at a time?

Like any sales request, the most you can withdraw is 90 per cent of the total account value. Plus of course, you can choose to reinvest. So there’s lots of flexibility.

So, this is one more way to free up time for other things?

Improved time efficient online functionality for advisers is at the centre of the improvements we’ve been making to the platform – making day-to-day tasks faster and easier and giving firms more time to focus on what really matters, such as speaking to clients.