Nucleus boss says re-reg could cost platforms £10m

David Ferguson, Nucleus chief executive, has estimated it could cost the platform industry upwards of £10 million to implement automated re-registration.

‘It could be more than £10 million for the whole sector, but this has to happen as it would be madness for some to stick to a manual process if everyone else is automating,’ he said.

The Tax Incentivised Saving Association has already opted to use a messaging system supported by global messaging service provider Swift to carry out re-registration.

Nucleus is already using Swift to execute trades on the wrap. Ferguson (pictured) said his firm faced a minimal cost of around £50,000 to prepare the wrap for auto re-registration.

Larger platforms said integrating Swift into their back offices to allow automated re-registration would be affordable.

Steve Sands, head of platform sales at Standard Life, said: ‘Putting this in is not going to make or break a platform.’

Swift estimated the actual cost of transferring clients’ assets from one platform to another would be around €1 (87p) if platforms had the automated systems in place to complete transfers.

Giving an example of a client switching holdings in six funds, the total cost would be €1.05, or 87p, if all the platforms, fund managers and third party managers involved were Swift enabled.