Fidelity Funds Network Changes
If you use the Fidelity FundsNetwork platform, I am sure that you will be aware that there are big changes being made very soon. By now some details will have been communicated to you directly by Fidelity, but in summary the following will be happening:
• Legacy ISA tax years no longer supported
• Consolidation of some products schemes
• New cash management services available from Q4 2017
• New share dealing services available from Q4 2017
The changes to the Legacy ISA tax years and consolidation of product schemes will be ready to go live on Monday 17th July. Later this year, firms will be migrating to Fidelity's new operating system on a one by one basis, meaning you may not see the new products for Cash Management and Share Dealing until later this year.
Full details of each change, and how they affect your handling of Fidelity policies in JCS are listed below.
Legacy ISA tax years no longer supported
Back in 2013, Fidelity no longer allowed the separation of ISAs by tax year from the tax year 2013 onwards, but allowed advisers to keep historic ISA plans separate. Since changes last year stopped any renewal commission from being paid out from these legacy tax year ISA plans, Fidelity believe that most advisers will have consolidated all of these legacy plans already, and so the impact will be minimal.
Impact in JCS: All legacy ISA tax year fund holdings will be reported as held under the main ISA plan when performing either a bulk valuation or an RTV. To prevent duplication of these funds holdings, the original tax year plans should be merged in JCS with the main ISA plan to copy over all notes, contributions, documents, history, diary etc.
Please note you should only do this AFTER Monday 17th July.
Consolidation of some product schemes
Historically, Fidelity split unit trust/OEICS holdings into separate plan references based on whether the holdings were on-platform or off-platform. Fidelity unit trusts would use the scheme name of UKUT, and Funds Network unit trusts would use the scheme name of ISM. This was causing some confusion for clients and advisers, so Fidelity offered the option of product consolidation to ensure both used the same external scheme name of “Funds”. The new service will only offer the consolidated version, where all unit trusts use the scheme name of “Funds”.
The same was also true of offshore plans where the plan could be split into the scheme names of FIDF, FIDC and FIDM. The product consolidation option allowed these to be consolidated into the one scheme name of “Offshore”. The new service will only offer the consolidated version, however, they have gone one step further to merge with the rest of the unit trusts as well, using the scheme name of “Funds”. The effect is that Fidelity now offer a single General Investment Account that holds on-platform, off-platform and offshore funds all in the same scheme name.
Impact in JCS: Any Fidelity plans that use the scheme name of UKUT, ISM, FIDC, FIDF, FIDC, Offshore and Funds should be merged in JCS to a single plan to copy over all notes, contributions, documents, history, diary etc. The resultant plan policy number/reference should contain the suffix of “:Funds”.
Please note you should only do this AFTER Monday 17th July.
New cash management services available
Clients will have access to a new cash account. This will use the scheme name of “CASH”. It will only contain cash and is used for moving money from and to external bank accounts, and to and from product cash accounts.
Impact in JCS: This cash account will appear in any bulk valuation, and can be mapped to an Interest Bearing Account in JCS. Any bulk valuation or RTV will update the balance of the case.
Each ISA and General Investment Account will also have additional cash holdings called “Product Cash” and “Phased Cash” used for account transactions and phased investments respectively.
Impact in JCS: These cash holdings will just appear as a “cash” holding in the list of funds within the ISA or General Investment Account, and will be named appropriately.
Please note that these additional cash holdings will only appear after your firm has been migrated to the new service later this year.
New share dealing services available
Fidelity will be launching new share dealing services that will enable clients to access a wider range of investments including: Investment Trusts, ETFs, UK Equities, Irish Equities, CDIs and UK Fixed Income Securities. These investments will be available from the ISA and General Investment Account.
Impact in JCS: Any shares found within an ISA or a General Investment Account during the valuation will be added as a holding of fund type “share” and included within the overall value of the case.
Please note that these additional share holdings will only appear after your firm has been migrated to the new service later this year.
As always, if you need assistance, guidance or help in this area please contact our Technical Support team.
