Gripes from Financial Planners about difficulties in dealing with NS&I have sparked a raft of changes.

NS&I announced that planners will for the first time be given access to information on their clients’ holdings via the phone. Requests for these details will now be almost instant, NS&I said, whereas previously, requests could only be made by post and it could take up to 2-3 weeks for a response to be provided.

But planners will have to wait until later in 2018 for online access to this information – a service NS&I is planning to launch using a secure log-in on via nsandi-adviser.com.

Another new feature is that an advice firm’s whole team, including Financial Planners, Paraplanners and other support staff, will get access to client information, as long as the firm has signed and supplied a ‘Terms of Business Agreement’ and the relevant ‘Client Letter of Authority’ is in place.

The new services have been introduced in response to feedback received from planners, advisers and colleagues on the need to make NS&I easier to work with.

Further features being introduced are:

More client information available to advice firms:
• Balances and valuations;
• Annual and ad-hoc statements;
• Maturity dates;
• Transaction information;
• Other account details NS&I holds.

New indefinite ‘Client Letter of Authority Template’:

• Letters of authority will now be held on file by NS&I indefinitely. Previously, firms had to supply a new Letter of Authority, signed by the customer, every time they requested information. Going forwards, only this new template will be accepted by NS&I, but once in place it will remain on file.

• ‘Terms of Business Agreement’: There will be a new agreement between NS&I and each advice firm who wishes to have access to information on their clients’ NS&I holdings. This document forms the legal relationship between NS&I and a financial advice firm, and helps protect the relationship between both parties and their mutual customers.

Andrew Pike, head of intermediary relationships at NS&I, said: “These new features of NS&I’s Adviser Helpline mean that NS&I is able to provide a faster and more comprehensive service to advice firms. We know that advisers often recommend NS&I products and are very supportive of our unique security guarantee, but they also tell us we could make life easier for them when contacting us. Therefore we expect these new enhancements will make a real difference.”