The ViaNova group is a voluntary collaboration between product providers and third-party administrators in the UK corporate pensions industry whose objective is to facilitate the automated processing of electronic transactions.  We use open standards based on data models and messages from the ISO 20022 messaging standard.

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Since 2005 the ViaNova working group has been responsible for developing market practice standards for the corporate pensions industry.  The standards produced under the group’s name have been adopted throughout the UK and around the world for the automation of funds orders and publication of prices, fund holdings and valuations.  Many billions of pounds have been transacted using our automation standards.

 

In Spring 2020 we started a new project to automate the transfer of customers pensions holdings between schemes.

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The ViaNova membership began a series of meetings and have agreed to run a pilot project.  The plan is to implement the market practice for transfers agreed by the UK Funds market practice group with service level agreements following the rules of the TISA TeX contract club.

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The plans for the project are summarised in the ViaNova Transfers project summary document available here

 

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The ViaNova transfers pilot scheme is slated in May 2021.

 

The pilot project will implement electronic corporate pension transfers based on the market practices developed by the UK funds market practice group and will take place under the SLAs of the Tisa Exchange (TeX).

 

Four major third party administration firms, members of the ViaNova working group, are planning to join the pilot scheme which will run for nine months.

 

The pilot project will see the automated transfer of investors corporate pension holdings between platforms.  Negotiations are currently under way with trustees to ensure an efficient and secure path forward for the industry.

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In January 2021 LifeSight - the WillisTowersWatson master trust scheme - signed up for the ViaNova transfers pilot project.  This is a supportive move by the fund trustees to support the adoption of open standards in corporate pension transfers

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Steve Wallace & Andy Hussey

15th January 2021

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