Aviva Platform frequently asked questions

We automatically pay gross for asset groups that moved to paying gross income following the change in tax rules from April 2017. For asset groups still issuing dividends net of tax, we make gross payments to your clients. We then reclaim the tax from HMRC on both the ISA Portfolio and the Pension Portfolio.

No, we only offer sterling denominated assets.

No, this isn’t possible. Fees are deducted from product cash where there is enough cash available to cover the charges.

Where there isn’t enough product cash, disinvestment will trigger in line with the model set up.

The Smart Switch process prevents common assets being sold and re-bought when switching between models. Smart Switch will only work with model to model trades. If the trades include individual assets this will be carried out as a standard switch.

We do not insist on a set amount of cash to be held as product cash, but this is a good approach to prevent disinvestment occurring from a model portfolio.​

If there is insufficient cash to pay the fees and charges due, an auto-disinvestment will commence to generate the required cash. Any disinvestment for Aviva, Adviser and Aviva Commercial Property charges will include an additional amount which is 10% of the charge due. This aims to cover any market movements between the disinvestment date and the charge date. If Cash Management is not enabled on your client's account, a £10 minimum disinvestment amount will apply. If Cash Management is enabled on your client's account, we’ll disinvest six times the value calculated, subject to a minimum amount of £60.

Cash Management is an option that can be enabled on your clients' products for payment of Adviser, Aviva, Discretionary Investment Manager (DIM) and Commercial Property charges. It aims to provide sufficient cash to meet future charges, reducing the frequency of additional disinvestments. See more details and find out how to enable Cash Management in our guide.

The Aviva Platform will always look at a client's cash account to pay fees and charges. The system will look 5 working days before the anniversary of the account suffixed 001  - if there is insufficient cash to pay the fees and charges due, an auto-disinvestment will commence to generate the required cash.​

If your client is invested in model portfolios, you should consider the impact of model trading on other processes (for example, assets in a model portfolio that is disinvesting for fees and charges are not available to be crystallised).​

Any disinvestment for Aviva, Adviser and Aviva Commercial Property charges will include an additional amount which is 10% of the charge due. This aims to cover any market movements between the disinvestment date and the charge date. If Cash Management is not enabled on your client's account, a £10 minimum disinvestment amount will apply. If Cash Management is enabled on your account, we’ll disinvest six times the value calculated, subject to a minimum amount of £60.

Cash Management is an option that can be enabled on your clients' products for payment of Adviser, Aviva, Discretionary Investment Manager (DIM) and Commercial Property charges. It aims to provide sufficient cash to meet future charges, reducing the frequency of additional disinvestments. See more details and find out how to enable Cash Management in our guide.

We suggest placing the required sells in advance, factoring in upcoming fees and charges, market movement and the client's cash account balance. Once the required cash is available on the Investment Portfolio, process the Bed & ISA using the available cash. 

You can download a client report from the Platform: launch Platform Services and then select "Business Reporting". Once there, run the "Clients By Adviser Summary Of Assets" business report. This report will show each client accounts' total value and how much of that value is in product cash, expressed as both £ and %. Note that this report does not currently include Corporate or Trustee Investment Portfolio accounts. Running the "Assets Under Administration" business report will give Corporate/Trustee GIA case details, including amount held in cash.

Most "monies out" process will show the available cash once commenced, however you can quickly see the available cash by accessing the client account (sub account level) and hovering your mouse/cursor over the word "Cash". The system will pop up a box showing how much of the cash in the client's cash account is available to use for a buy, withdrawal etc.

This section of the transaction history is displaying all cash movement into (positive entries) and out of (negative entries) the product cash account.  Inspecie movement of assets do not appear on the ‘all cash’ section of Transaction History.  For example if you have re-registered assets onto the platform, or assets have moved between accounts, for example drawdown.  These transactions will be seen under the ‘investments’ section of Transaction History.

This is at your discretion, but it is worth noting if you select "reinvest" where the client is invested in model portfolios containing income funds or cash, that any income distributions generated (or cash interest generated) will rebuy the model.

Note that there are certain processes that cannot be completed whilst assets in a model are trading (e.g. crystallisations) until that model trade has settled so you should consider choosing "Leave as cash" if you are looking to minimise model trading.

Corporate clients, trustees, Power of Attorney clients and adviser-branded clients can contact our Platform Services team to set up their platform access:
0800 056 2026
advisedplatform@aviva.com

To register, please ask your client to visit our customer site .
They'll need to register using an activation code (if they've been sent one). Otherwise they can simply use their AV account number.
You can find your client's AVXXXX account number by going into 'Platform Services', and generating a 'client by adviser report' under 'Business reporting'.

There's also a client MyAviva user guide.

Yes, you can give both of them access on a read-only basis. You will be able to set this up with your distribution support team or call 0800 056 2026.

Should your client have any problems with MyAviva they can contact us by live chat on Aviva.co.uk or by email at myaccount@mail.online.aviva.co.uk

Aviva is committed to working with advisers and we encourage clients to discuss their policy and future financial needs with their advisers. We won’t cross-sell any products that you already help clients with.

Find out more about MyAviva

Your client will only pay charges for the assets held in each model, regardless of the total value of the portfolio. You can hold multiple models within a single wrapper, mixing and matching between your own and those managed by a Discretionary Investment Manager.

Permission to view a model is granted on a model by model basis. If you cannot see the model you want to invest in, it may be that you have not got permission to the model. You will need to contact the Discretionary Investment Manager for them to grant you permission.

The 'none' refers to the fact that there is no rebalancing set on the model.

No, this isn’t possible. Fees are deducted from product cash where there is enough cash available to cover the charges.

Where there isn’t enough product cash, disinvestment will trigger in line with the model set up.

Where a Bank Holiday falls on a Monday, calculations will run one business day earlier (i.e. Friday).This means that adviser charge fees will be calculated for Tuesday-Friday (and not Tuesday-Monday as usual) and statements will be generated on Saturday morning. BACS payments will be triggered on the Tuesday following the Bank Holiday Monday, as usual, and paid from Thursday to adviser bank accounts.

The following week’s remuneration calculation and statement run will therefore cover the period Saturday (before the Bank Holiday) to the following Monday due to the previous week’s truncated calculation. BACS files will be triggered on the Tuesday for payment from Thursday as normal.

Yes. For more information please see our Joint Bed & ISA Guide.

Unfortunately we cannot accept an inherited pension from a non-UK resident.

Yes, you can pre-populate applications from a quote. We’ve also streamlined online existing business processes, designed to save you time.

Note that whilst the online application is pre-populated from a new business quote, the Client Declaration generated with the quote is not pre-populated. 

Both new Direct Debits and amendments to existing Direct Debits take 10 working days for the AUDDIS (Automated Direct Debit Instruction Service) to be set up/amended. Any changes to a direct debit within 10 working days of the collection date will not apply to the in-progress direct debit. The changes will be reflected in the following month’s direct debit payment.

Free text is controlled by the Aviva operations team who can override the standard text. This is used to provide more case-specific notes.

Check out our Aviva Platform User guide provides details of our signature-lite process.

These are called "What If" illustrations, and are available by accessing the client's sub account and clicking on "Projections". Once there - you will have 2 options: 

1) Run a projection on the account based on current value, assets, contributions etc.

2) Run a "What If" illustration where you can quote for a potential top up, as well as other potential changes (crystallisations, fund switches etc)

Please DO NOT post Client Declarations; Drawdown declarations and Expression Of Wishes forms to Aviva. They should be uploaded directly into the client's correspondence section online.

Our model portfolios are effectively treated as a “Fund of Funds” which means all individual assets within the model can only be traded at that model level. To amend the assets within a model simply use the “edit” function to edit any existing portfolio to make the necessary changes.

To amend a model on an individual client basis use the copy function to create a new model and make the necessary changes. The client can then be switched into the new model.

You can move multiple clients via the ‘Platform Services’ tab and then clicking on the “Bulk Switch” icon.

You will need to select the model to switch from and to, and any clients to exclude.

This process will use the Smart Switch process to prevent common assets being sold and re-bought.

There is no functionality to print details of model portfolios, but you can screen-print the page using 'Ctrl+Print Screen' or 'Ctrl+P'.

Your model portfolios can be located via the ‘Platform Services’ tab and clicking on ‘Model Portfolios’. Only adviser-created models are accessible through ‘Platform Services’ and any Discretionary Investment Manager (DIM) models will be visible when running an illustration.

When completing a quote, all available model portfolios (including DIM models) can be found at the asset selection stage.

'Product cash' means any cash held in the product Cash Account.

'Model cash' is cash held in a model portfolio. A model portfolio is treated as an asset in its own right. It can be added to the account’s asset allocation, where a percentage is specified. You can have all of the account invested in the model, or just a portion. You can also assign more than one model to an account. Any cash allotted to the model is there for asset allocation purposes and can't be used to fund charges and withdrawals. Where there is no product cash available within the account, the system will sell down proportionately from the model assets.

The transfer tracker, which can be accessed via the Platform Services tab, will give you the latest updates on the status of your clients' transfers.

You can choose whether:

You want these handled so that the platform proportionately splits across all assets or

You want the system to use money in or out to rebalance the client holdings.

CHAPS payments may be unsuitable for pooled accounts due to some banks requiring specific customer details in order to allocate to the correct customer.

You can select BACS as the method of payment instead.

For Pension Portfolio payments in (excluding transfers):
Aviva Pension Trustees UK Limited Client Money Collection
Sort code: 40-02-50
Account number: 01357689

For Pension Portfolio transfers in:
Aviva Pension Trustees UK Limited Client Money Transfer
Sort code: 40-02-50
Account number: 21357719

Investment Portfolio and ISA Portfolio payments in (excluding transfers):
Aviva Wrap UK Limited Client Money Collection
Sort code: 40-02-50
Account number: 21357735

Investment Portfolio and ISA Portfolio transfers in:
Aviva Wrap UK Limited Client Money
Transfer Sort code: 40-02-50
Account number: 61357751

Yes, we offer Phased Drawdown where you can input the Tax Free Cash / Gross taxable income required for each payment. For help or training on how to process this for new or existing clients, email us at DISTPAC@aviva.com and we will contact you to help.

Yes, to access you would need to launch Platform Services, access the "Model Portfolios" area and click on "Bulk Switch / Redirect". For assistance please email DISTPAC@aviva.com

Note that any clients invested in a model portfolio which is trading will be listed at the top of the page as part of the process. These clients cannot be processed using the bulk switch tool whilst the model trade is in flight - the system will prompt you to either wait until the trades have settled and then key using the Bulk function, or go to each individual client and process the switch at client level, which will then queue up behind the existing model trade.

Note that the redirect of regular premiums cannot be processed as part of the switch when keying the switch at individual client level. To redirect at client level, access the "contributions/contributions & withdrawals" section and edit as appropriate.

The way to validate they have been completed is to wait for the unit statement to show within the client correspondence section (usually T+4). If you are moving from a model to another model the model name will change on the next business day.

The cash will be available for use once the trade is settled.

Please redirect the regular contribution before trading.

If purchases are in progress you may want to wait for these to settle before processing the switch.

We have had isolated reports that this generates a new Direct Debit advance notification, however there is no impact on the client.

There's a wide range of training materials, including videos and guides, on the  Aviva Platform support page. We recommend you bookmark this page for future reference. To request training and support from one of our Platform Adoption Consultants, please email us at DISTPAC@aviva.com

Occasionally quotes can take a while to load due to the number being produced within the system. Try pressing the F5 key, in some cases the illustration then generates without having to wait.

Occasionally quotes can take a while to load when volumes are high. Try pressing the F5 key, in some cases the illustration then generates without having to wait.

Yes, this is possible by accessing one of the Post-retirement accounts to be converted and clicking on "+" next to "Income Maintenance" The option to convert will appear. Note that the system prompts explain the scenarios where the plan is not available to convert (trades in flight, dividend distribution in flight, income in flight etc.). A move from capped to flexi-access drawdown will trigger the money purchase annual allowance.

Yes, this is possible by accessing one of the accounts to be merged and clicking on the "+" next to "Income Maintenance". The option to merge will appear. Note that the system prompts explain the scenarios where the plan(s) is/are not available to merge. Note that once merged, income will need to be set up again on the account, if required.

The platform allows you to key on a 'sell and withdrawal' in a one-stage, straight through process. But it's worth being aware that, if the sells yield less than is needed on an Investment Portfolio or ISA Portfolio, the client will receive a reduced amount. 

To avoid these scenarios it is possible to generate the required cash in advance (via the Sell process), factoring in upcoming fees and charges, the current cash account balance and market movement. Once you have the required available cash in the client's cash account you can key the withdrawal online from available cash, ensuring the correct full amount pays to the client.

Access the client's product account and click on the "+" next to "Income Maintenance", then click on "Edit income payment details". 

Please note: If you wish to cancel your income payments, this must be done at least 10 working days before the current income payment date. For any amendments, please also be advised that if the current income payment is due within the next 10 working days, these amendments will not take effect until the current income payment has been paid.

Once in the edit screen, the system will display:

- Current max GAD figure

- Income taken to date in current pension year

- Maximum gross income remaining in the current pension year

- Pension Year End Date

You will then be able to input the income required for the remainder of the current pension year. Note that the figure you input is not the monthly income required x 12, but is the total of the income required for the remainder of the current pension year. So if there were 3 months left in the pension year and the income required was £500 per month, you would input £1,500 as there are 3 months left in the pension year (3 x £500 = £1,500). For assistance please email DISTPAC@aviva.com

The system will also allow you to input the future pension year's income. If left blank, income will stop.  The system displays the GAD maximum figure and allows you to input the gross annual income required for future pension years either by £ or by % of Max GAD.

The system will also allow you to specify pro rata or asset specific for the disinvestment required for meeting the income, and also allow you to select the bank account in which the income is to be paid.

When setting up your client's income, the system will allow you to choose either "pro rata" or "asset specific" and will act on your instructions to generate income. Even if you hold sufficient cash for income, if you select "pro rata" the system will sell down across the client's assets pro rata to generate the income. If you want to ensure the system targets cash in Product Cash for income, then ensure you select "Asset Specific" when setting up the income, then choose 100% Cash.

Targetting assets as part of a transfer application, even if going straight into drawdown will result in the proceeds of the transfer being invested prior to the drawdown process.  If a swift payment of Tax Free Cash on single drawdown is the priority, then keying the application as 100% Cash means Tax Free Cash will be paid with 48 hours of the transfer landing. Note that, if you take this course of action, then as a result, the post-retirement account will be set up as 100% cash - so you'll need to access the post-retirement account to place any trades needed.

When setting up your client's income, the system will allow you to choose either "pro rata" or "asset specific" and will act on your instructions to generate income. Even if you hold sufficient cash for income, if you select "pro rata" the system will sell down across the client's assets pro rata to generate the income. If you want to ensure the system targets a specific asset for income, then ensure you select "Asset Specific" when setting up the income, then choose the required asset.