How to write a drawdown transfer report

Nigel Ogram

In May and June 2025, I wrote a couple of ‘how to’ blogs on pension consolidation. These blogs covered uncrystallised and crystallised switching, which have a few workflow differences. Following popular demand, we’ve decided to write a standalone blog covering the switching of crystallised (or part-crystallised) plans.

As is always the case with this type of blog, I’m not going to explore everything that needs to be considered when pension switching but instead focuses on the task of documenting the advice in a quick to create and easy to read, compliant suitability report.

The process

1. Select or add the client

From the Genovo main dashboard, go to Write report and select or create the private client(s) you wish to write the report to. If your Genovo account is integrated with your back office system, remember that you can import the client, rather than adding them manually, by clicking the add from CRM button.

2. Select the Report Creation Method

The preferred report creation method is to use the Genovo AI Assistant (‘Gena’). All you need to do is type, paste or speak a simple advice prompt stating the advice scenario, for example:

Gena will then:

Determine the most appropriate report type.
Apply a report name.
Create the framework of the report.
Add the required report sections.
Import the plans from your back office system, or if you don’t have a CRM integration, create ‘skeleton’ plans ready for you to flesh out as required.

However, in the interests of explaining all steps of this advice scenario, this blog walks you through the building of the report using Genovo’s ‘from scratch’ report creation method. There are other report creation methods available, designed to fast-track you through one or more of the steps below and make the report building process even easier.

3. Create the report

In Report Details, give the report a name and select the Report Type. Assuming you’re creating the report ‘from scratch‘, we’d suggest using the ‘Suitability Report’. However, it is also possible to use the ‘Review report – recommendations’.

4. Add the required sections

You’ll then be directed to the Report Builder where you should add the necessary sections from the ‘Available sections’ drop down, which in this instance will be:

Review of Your Existing Retirement Income Plans
Drawing Benefits from Your Pension Funds
Recommended Investment Strategy

5. Complete all section wizards

Next, you’ll need to step through the section wizards of all sections that require your input, as follows:

5.1. The Introduction section

Progress through the steps of the Introduction section in the usual way. When you reach the Client Objectives step you should select or add the advice option(s) that accurately reflect the client’s objective(s) and add comprehensive Know Your Client (KYC) information to ensure you fulfil the regulator’s expectations of you in terms of documenting a client’s objectives.

There’s a Genovo advice option specifically for replacement business:

‘Consolidate your existing *investments and / or pensions* where appropriate, so it is easier to manage your investment portfolio and see how it is performing.’

Once you’ve selected this option, you can click on the Edit Objective / Add KYC info link to tweak the objective wording to suit the client’s actual objectives and to add the KYC info – the ‘back story’ behind the client’s desire to consolidate plans.

Of course, you can add your own Advice Option if you prefer, or you can enter the client’s objectives by typing or pasting in external content by clicking the Add objectives as free text button.

Finally, if you are integrated with intelliflo office, you can also import client objectives from IO by clicking the add data from CRM button:

5.2. The Client Risk Profile section

It’s in this section that you will confirm the client’s attitude to risk and capacity for loss, as well as their knowledge and experience and any investment preferences.

5.3. The Review of Your Existing Retirement Plans section

5.3.1. The Plan Summary step

First, you’ll be prompted to provide an overview of the existing plans. Just click the Add Plan button and you’ll be shown a new window where you can enter all the required plan details. If your Genovo account is integrated with your back-office app (and you’re working with an integrated client), adding plans is even easier – just click the Add plans from CRM button and choose which plans you want to import.

5.3.2. The Plan Benefits & Features step

This step is very important for pension switching recommendations, especially if switching the plan will result in some features being given up.

5.3.3. The Current Plan Charges step

Next, summarise the ongoing charges of the plans being reviewed in the Current Plan Charges step.

Note that if you’ve included the plan in a previous Genovo report, you can have the charges pulled into the new report from the previous report by enabling Predictive Plan Charges.

5.3.4. The Recommended Action step

In this step, you will need to confirm what action you are recommending in respect to each plan and the reasons to support the recommendation. For all plans being switched, you should select either:

‘switch’ – if you’re recommending the plan is switched in its entirety, or
‘partially switch’ – if you’re recommending that the ceding plan remains in force, but with a reduced fund value.

You should ensure that after you’ve selected the appropriate Recommended Action, you also add some associated Advice Reasons – this is the ‘why’ part of the advice. Just click the Add advice reason hyperlink and then select from any of the standard advice reasons, or of course, you can add your own custom advice reason.

5.3.5. The Key Disadvantages and Tax Implications step.

It’s here that you can confirm any disadvantages associated with the recommendation being made, such as the loss of a particular feature or benefit, or any increase in charges, imposition of an exit penalty, etc

5.3.6. The four Plan Comparison steps

Finally for this section, because this is replacement business, you will also be prompted to compare the following aspects of the existing and recommended new plans in the Plan Comparison steps.

Plan Charges – Compare the RIY of the existing plan and the new plan that is being recommended to replace it.
Reduction in Yield (RIY) – if you’re recommending that the ceding plan remains in force, but with a reduced fund value.
Performance – if performance has been cited as a factor for replacing the current plan, we would expect to see supporting information here.
Death Benefits – allows you to record a ‘before & after’ position regarding the plan’s death benefits

5.4. The Drawing Benefits from Your Pension Funds section

5.4.1. The Plan Summary step

Just as with the review section above, your first task is to add the plan(s). Just as with the review section, this is either done manually by clicking the Add plans button, or if your Genovo account is integrated with your back-office app (and you’re working with an integrated client), click the Add plans from CRM button and choose which plans you want to import.

If you used the Gena report creation method, this step will already have a plan entered for you (either by importing it from your back office, or by creating a ‘skeleton’ plan).

Next, you’ll complete the three ‘why’ steps for the new plan recommendation:

5.4.2. Why Product Type

Why has the actual plan type (e.g. “Flexi Access Drawdown via a personal pension”) been recommended?

5.4.3. Why Withdrawal

If the recommendation is a switch of a crystallised plan that is not generating income (i.e. only tax free cash has previously been taken), then you can select the “Do not include ‘Why Withdrawal’ subsection in this report”. However, if income is being continued, or amended, this is the step where you can explain the rationale for the income amount.

5.4.4. Why Provider / Plan

Self-explanatory – the rationale for choosing the recommended provider.

5.4.5. The Plan Charges step

If the provider / plan you’re recommending is one that you frequently recommend, consider using the Plan Charges Profiles Library so that some of the charges can be pre-populated in this step. Otherwise, you need to manually enter the charges for the recommended plan.

Next, complete the last three steps of this section:

Income sustainability step to record the usual drawdown metrics of critical yields, age fund exhausted etc
Key Disadvantages & Tax Implications step to record any disadvantages of the new plan (remembering that you’ll already have covered any disadvantages of switching the existing plan in the equivalent step of the Review of Your Existing Retirement Income Plans section). Remember that in Genovo, disadvantages are different to risk warnings, with the former being something that will happen and the latter being something that might happen. Disadvantages are selected by the user and risk warnings are automated.
Other Solutions – this step (optionally) allows you to disclose what other solutions you considered, but discounted

5.5. The Recommended Investment Strategy section

Because you’re recommending a new plan, you’ll need to complete the Recommended Investment Strategy section to detail the investment strategy of the plan you’re recommending.

5.6. The Important Information section

This is the last wizard section you’ll need to complete and is self-explanatory.

6. Tailor the structure of the report

Having completed all the section wizards you should then tailor the structure of your report by unchecking any sections you do not wish to include in your report; and then change the sort order of any sections to reflect your personal preferences.

You’ll find more information about how to remove sections from your report here.

You’ll find more information about how to reorder the sections in your report here.

7. Create the report

Having created the framework of the report of the report with 98%+ of the content already included as an initial draft in the Report Builder, both Writer and Reader users can then make any final tweaks to the content of the draft report in the Report Editor. To open and edit the report in the Report Editor click Create / Edit report.

8. Upload the completed report into your back office system

If your Genovo account is integrated with your back office system and you’ve been working with an integrated client, and you’ve been using the Genovo Report Editor to make the final tweaks to your report, don’t forget that you can upload the report back to the client record in the back office app with just a couple of clicks.

Nigel’s knowledge

So, what else can you do to make drawdown switching reports easier to complete?

An integration with a back-office app makes adding clients and plans much easier. This area of the Genovo Knowledge Base covers our current integration partners.
If the advice scenario of the report you’ve just worked on is likely to be repeated, you may then wish to convert it into a template and save it to your Report Template Library to use as a starting point for creating future reports.
If you created any custom advice options or advice reasons, you could keep them for re-use in future reports. You can do this ‘on the fly’ as you’re working in the relevant step, or you can do it from the Advice Option & Reason Library.
If you want to customise any of the boilerplate report content to reflect your own preferences, you can do this via the Report Content Manager:
What is the Report Content Manager?
Video tutorial – How to customise the boilerplate content of your reports and templates using the Report Content Manager