Standard Life is to invest £30m into its wrap platform which is widely used by Financial Planners.

The company says the programme has been launched to focus specifically on “innovation” that will streamline adviser and wealth manager business processes and proposition delivery.

David Tiller, head of adviser propositions and strategy, said: “With the increasing degree of uncertainty around the future of some platforms in the market we feel it is important that Standard Life provides a clear demonstration of its commitment to the adviser market.

“By dealing with the sunset clause and pension freedoms ahead of time, we’re able to make a firm undertaking to invest directly in areas that help firms efficiently meet growing client demand for sophisticated retirement advice.”

Under its ‘Accelerate’ programme Standard Life will concentrate on supporting the centralised investment and retirement processes required to efficiently scale advisory businesses. Key investment priorities include:

· Streamlining the delivery of ongoing drawdown reviews and withdrawal management
· Efficient execution of multi-tax wrapper, multi-goal investment strategies
· Developing deeper integration with adviser applications
· Segregated institutional grade investment capabilities via Wrap’s award winning investment hub
· Enhanced reporting and alerts to enable closer adviser oversight of client portfolios

Mr Tiller added: “Through a series of targeted developments, our aim with Accelerate is to increase the capacity of adviser firms to manage sophisticated retirement investment, income and drawdown solutions by at least 50%.

“There are many ambitious adviser businesses out there that can see the opportunity created by pension freedoms. They shouldn’t be held back by their platform technology being configured to support only simple retail accumulation product sales. We cannot lose sight of the fact that this opportunity is driven by unprecedented client demand.”

“We have a responsibility to help people to access the advice they require. With a shortage of advisers the only way to create the capacity required is for existing adviser businesses to be able to help more clients.”