Wealth Managers
Wealth management businesses have an existing client base and advise on a range of services that help their clients manage their current situation and long-term goals with saving and investing solutions.
As a wealth management business, you could be looking to re-platform your current business, expand your offering and leverage technology to service your customers at scale and improve customer outcomes.
You are a company that manages investments on behalf of your customers, and are looking to make the investing process easier for your advisers and customers.
You are a company enabling your customers to open accounts, buy securities and custody them, and you are looking to re-platform away from your current setup.
Riester Pension
The term “Riester pension” includes products ranging from insurance policies, savings plans, unit trust agreements and home loan to savings contracts.
The saver invests a certain amount each month and can withdraw capital after retirement. Low-income savers and families with children benefit from the 'Riester' allowances while higher earners benefit from the tax advantages. Under this account, contributions of up to €2,100 can be claimed as a special expense in the income tax return.
'Rürup'-pension
Designed for the self-employed and freelancers who are not covered by statutory pension insurance, Rürup'- pension benefits are taxed in the same way as the statutory pension, but initially only partially.
The taxable portion depends on the year in which the pension commences and is fixed for life as a fixed amount. It rises continuously with later years of retirement.
Piano Individuale di Risparmio (PIR)
PIR offers tax incentives to savers investing in small and medium sized Italian companies. It can be sold as mutual funds, discretionary accounts, life policies or security deposit accounts and carries full exemption from 26% income tax if savers stay invested for at least five years.
PIR plans are aimed at retail investors resident in Italy who can invest a maximum of €30,000 per year and up to €150,000 over five years.
At least 70% of assets must be invested in financial instruments (equities or bonds) issued by Italian and/or foreign companies (EU and EEA) permanently established in Italy under the domestic fiscal regime. Of this 70%, at least 30% (or 21% of total investable assets) must be in Italian small and mid caps not included in the main index (FTSE MIB).
Plan d’Epargne en Actions (PEA)
Created in 1992, PEA is a tax-efficient investment wrapper for residents, allowing French investors to buy and sell European securities with preferential conditions.
It is considered as a simplified stock savings plan because a PEA account contains both a securities account and a cash account. The cash account is debited when a security is purchased, and credited when a security is sold or a company pays dividends.
Livret A
Established in 1818, the product acts as a savings account for French citizens and residents, and the annual returns are not taxed.
As of 2015, only one account may be held by an individual, with an amount from €10 to €22,950.
European ISA (Spanish Compliant Bond)
Spanish compliant investment bonds are tax-efficient, unit-linked platforms for EU regulated funds such as collective investment schemes and unit trusts.
To avail tax benefits on the above, the resident must invest in a tax-saving life insurance bond that contains an element of ‘risk’ and pays out life insurance over and above the plan (around 101%).
You are an advice firm that helps your customers to plan, save and invest for the future, and you are looking to re-platform your existing book, build a low-advice proposition or create an integrated front-to-back solution
Regulatory
In order to offer an investment proposition to your customers, you will need the relevant permissions that match your business model.
The most common permissions in the wealth and investment space are:
- Advising on investments
- Arranging (bringing about) deals in investments
- Arranging safeguarding and administration of assets
- Dealing in investments as agent
- Making arrangements with a view to transactions in investments
If you already have the permissions mentioned above for your regular business activities, you’re all set to work with us. You should seek your own qualified, independent advice relating to the regulatory permissions you may require for your specific offering.
You can apply to the FCA for a Variation of Permission (VoP) if you need to change or add to your existing regulated activities. This can take up to 12 months.
WealthKernel has been providing investment infrastructure since 2015 and holds FCA permissions for its activities. You can view our full permissions on the FCA Register.
You can view our regulatory overview page here for more information on the regulatory environment.
Business Model
WealthKernel supports all types of regulated businesses, and the most common built on our API are Execution-Only (XO), Discretionary and Advisory.
With an Execution-Only proposition, your users will be making their own investment decisions on where to invest their money - you will be responsible for choosing the investment universe to offer them as well as a place to execute their trades.
In a Discretionary Fund Manager (DFM) proposition, you will be investing your customers' money on their behalf, choosing suitable investments based on the risk tolerance of your customers.
In an Advisory proposition, you will conduct deep dives on your clients and will recommend suitable investments for them based on their current financial situation, future goal and risk appetite.
KYC
As a wealth manager, you will already have processes for onboarding customers and for KYC.
We can support this setup with a Letter of Comfort between our two companies, that allows you to continue with your current procedure to onboard and KYC your customer. We will also conduct random and periodic sampling to maintain and ensure that our KYC standards are being met.
WealthKernel also offers a KYC service for onboarding your users and is integrated with third-party KYC providers to offer a full suite of checks. Our service allows your users to be digitally onboarded and conducts KYC checks in line with industry standards.
The service lets you view the status of any KYC checks and account updates, giving you a full view of the onboarding process.
Account Types
With WealthKernel, your business can offer multiple account types to customers and enable them to invest in their choice of products.
WealthKernel can support all of the following account types in the UK.
ISAs are tax-efficient accounts in the UK, that enable retail investors to save or invest without being taxed on the interest or income they earn.View API
A General Investment Account is a non-tax-advantaged account where investments are held and has no limit for the amount that can be invested.
View API
A JISA is a tax-efficient investment account for children that can be contributed to by family and friends, but only the child can access the money.
View API
Trading
WealthKernel is open architecture and supports a broad range of investment instruments, and all of our investments are liquid, listed and suitable for the retail market. This helps our Tenants customise their investment offering with their choice of instruments.
We currently support US stocks, UK stocks, ETFs, and Mutual Funds and also offer all of our supported instruments in fractions.
WealthKernel operates a sub-broker model and consolidates all client orders in a certain window, and sends it to a sub-broker once a day. We also settle all orders in GBP.
Custody
We act as a custodian for our Tenants, and all of our client money is held at Tier 1 banks in the UK under WealthKernel Nominees.
WealthKernel also strictly complies with the CASS rules and is responsible for safeguarding and securing clients’ money as well as records, accounts and reconciliations.
We receive regular audits from an external party to ensure that our systems and controls around Client Money are working appropriately.
Payments & Transfers
We support a diverse range of payment methods that allow your customers to make one-off and recurring deposits to their portfolios.
We are integrated with electronic asset transfer providers to enable your users to transfer their assets from another provider to our accounts at WealthKernel.
The transfers can be made in cash or in-specie, depending on the asset type and you and your customer's choice.
Front Ends
As a wealth management business, you will already have an adviser portal and a client portal that your employees and customers use. This may be built in-house or outsourced to a third-party provider.
As a platform provider, WealthKernel can integrate with your front end and has all the building blocks needed to support you and power your business.
We offer all the resources your tech team needs to connect to our platform, allowing you to create a fully digital front-to-back end experience for your advisers and clients.
Tenants - The term we use to describe our clients at WealthKernel.
