Platform Transact has embargoed staff leave for several weeks to cope with the end of tax year rush.

The firm says that it has put in place measures, “to ensure that we provide the highest levels of service possible at this the busiest time of year.”

There is an embargo on Client Operations (COps) staff full leave between 20 March and 7 April and a partial staff leave embargo the week before and after these dates.

The firm, which has found recruitment challenging recently, has also added 13 new client service managers who will join its COps teams this week.

The firm says recent recruitment efforts have helped fill many vacancies.

In addition, from 13 March 19 staff will also be working on high volume, low complexity tasks to free up more experienced frontline staff to deal with more complex tasks and queries.

From 20 March Transact will also have a dedicated team providing additional support and managing transfers.

In its latest newsletter, the firm also says that its digitalisation programme is “progressing well.” Digitalising paper processes is a key priority for the firm this year and and much of the underlying architecture, frameworks and code for digitalising the platform is in place.

Separately, the firm confirmed that its buy commission exemption threshold was reduced from £200,000 to £100,000 on 1 March.

In terms of cash deposits, the firm says that as cash interest rates have increased the platform has passed on all interest earned on pooled cash back to clients. Transact said, as an example, if a client is holding 8% of their portfolio in instant access cash and their Transact charges were 0.24% (an average), then at the current interest rate of 3% (approximately what is being paid on pooled cash) the interest will fund all of their Transact charges.