This blog gives you the latest topical news plus some informal comments on them from ShareSoc’s directors and other contributors. These are the personal comments of the authors and not necessarily the considered views of ShareSoc. The writers may hold shares in the companies mentioned. You can add your own comments on the blog posts, but note that ShareSoc reserves the right to remove or edit comments where they are inappropriate or defamatory.

Problems at Alliance Trust Savings

An article in FTAdviser has reported a number of problems with the new technology platform being implemented by Alliance Trust Savings (ATS). They decided a couple of years ago to upgrade to a new software platform so as to improve the service to clients, but there have clearly been some major teething troubles.

For example, one IFA said that the first and only time she put a client on the new platform had been a disaster. She said “the platform had been generating trades randomly, such as selling out of all UK equity funds, and had ring-fenced cash for no reason so the money couldn’t be used to allocate to investments”. ATS have apparently stopped putting some new clients onto the new platform while they sort out the technical issues, but the FT article indicated that advisers would be disappointed if the issues were not resolved as ATS is one of the lowest cost platform providers.

Ed Carey, sales director of ATS, was quoted as saying that the business would make a “meaningful profit” in 2016 which would certainly be an improvement on previous years.

ShareSoc would be interested in any difficulties users of ATS have experienced of late.

Roger Lawson

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