The True Potential Platform: Meet Richard Taylor, The Project Leader

We’re excited to launch our new behind the scenes series explaining our new and enhanced Platform. Richard Taylor, Project Leader, offers an insight into the development so far…

What is a platform

A platform is a place where you can hold a range of tax wrappers, for example ISA and Pension accounts and invest in a number of different investment funds. This allows clients the convenience of having their investments in one place and enables them to keep track of their investments in real time, via tools such as websites and smart phone apps.

When did the project start

Having previously managed our platform operations team I was assigned to the project in January 2017, therefore the project has been running for nearly two years. There are several reasons why we wanted to build a platform. As an organisation, True Potential feel it is important to ‘own the process’ this means using True Potential systems and products to support our clients. We already build and develop our own client websites and look after our clients’ money via our Investment Management team therefore the last piece in the jigsaw was the platform engine which sits in between.

What departments are currently involved?

As you would expect, a project of this size spans many different departments within the business. We started with a relatively small project team and spent a number of months working on the foundations for the new system. We were keen to build as much of the system in house, therefore we had multiple development teams involved in building the webpages and the background processes. Compliance and Risk teams provided us with guidance from a regulatory and legal perspective. Existing Operational staff have been involved in both the testing and the refinement of the new system and marketing and client service teams are responsible for communicating the changes to our clients.

What stage of plan are we in?

We have been in a state of testing now for several months. After initial functional and user acceptance testing we had a period of Model office testing which effectively replicates how you would be operating in a live environment. Once we were confident enough that we had the right processes and controls in place we started to onboard True Potential staff accounts. Hopefully it is reassuring to know that the project team and senior partners of the firm were the first clients to invest onto our new platform. In the coming weeks we will be opening the platform to both True Potential Investor and advised client routes therefore it’s a very busy time for the project team.

What might the benefits be to the clients/adviser

We were fortunate that we were able to build a platform from the ground up allowing us to completely focus on a system with our client’s needs in mind. We designed the system to be as automated as possible using the latest technology available, this means reducing any time that a request may be sitting in a tasklist for a team member to action. The fact that we are now in control of the platform system will allow us to introduce further efficiencies and continue to provide innovative features that our clients can benefit from in the future.