Genovo Review Report 2.0 New Features & Updates July 2022

Team Genovo

Having taken a momentary break from our ‘spring clean’ of the Genovo content – more to follow on this shortly – we have more recently turned our attentions to our review reports.

As announced in May’s update, we will be formally decommissioning the Review Report 1.0 from 1 August, leaving you with two possible Report Types to use when it comes to your client reviews:

• Our 2nd generation review report, the Review Report 2.0; and
• The Continued Suitability Report.

The Review Report 2.0 has always been designed to allow users to provide an existing client with a holistic review of their financial affairs, as well as their existing investments as part of an annual (or more frequent) review service. It has also been designed to meet all the requirements of MiFID II reporting. It can include:

• An update on the client’s circumstances.
• An update on the client’s assets and liabilities.
• A review of the client’s risk profile.
• A detailed review of the client’s objectives.
• A summary of the key outputs / outcomes following a review of the client’s cash flow plan.
• A review of the client’s existing plans
• Ex-ante and / or ex-post charges disclosure in line with MiFID II reporting requirements.
• A review of the service you have provided to the client since their last review.
• Any next steps and action required by you or the client.
• An authority to proceed.
• Relevant product and technical notes in the appendix.

The Continued Suitability Report is a shorter and more product focused report than the Review Report 2.0. It has been specifically designed to fulfil the requirements of MiFID II reporting where there has been no change in the client’s investment objectives, and you solely wish to confirm to the client the on-going suitability of their existing investment(s). It can include:

• An update on the client’s circumstances.
• A review of the client’s risk profile.
• A review of the client’s existing plans with confirmation of continued suitability (i.e. a recommendation to ‘retain’).
• Ex-ante and / or ex-post charges disclosure in line with MiFID II reporting requirements.
• A review of the service you have provided to the client since your last review.
• An adviser / client declaration.

It has always been our view that new business recommendations should be kept separate from the formal annual (or more frequent) review process, and hence historically:

• The Review Report 2.0 and Continued Suitability Report have never included any recommendation sections within them; and
• We have always encouraged our users to write a separate suitability report should the need to cover a new business recommendation (e.g. a pension switch or a new ISA recommendation etc) come about during the course of an (annual) review.

However, as you know, at Genovo, we pride ourselves on the fact that we ‘exist very close to our clients’. So having canvassed the opinion of a sample of our users on this matter, it became clear that reviews are not always as black and white as this, and like much in life they are often a shade of grey.

For example, it’s not uncommon as a part of a client’s annual review to identify that one of their ISAs is no longer suitable and a recommendation is needed to transfer it to another provider. Similarly, it’s not unusual to come across a small pension pot that needs to be consolidated within a larger pension fund. These are clearly both examples of ‘replacement business’ where a new business recommendation is required.

However, rather than having to write two separate reports, most of the users we spoke to felt that in instances like this it would not only be more efficient for them but also clearer for the client if all the recommendations were addressed in one report as part of the review. And having thought about it for a moment we struggled to disagree!

Therefore, carrying on our tradition of making changes to Genovo as a direct result of user feedback we have:

• Added the following sections into the Review Report 2.0:
  • New Investment Recommendation
  • New Pension Recommendation
  • Drawing Benefits from Your Pension Fund
  • New Protection Recommendation
  • Appendix – Plan Comparison
• Extended the range of recommended actions in the various review sections to cover such actions as ‘switch’, ‘transfer’ or ‘encash and reinvest the proceeds’. You’ll find a full summary of the recommended actions that are now available for selection in the Recommended Action step of the various review sections in each Report Type here.
• Added all the Plan Comparison steps into the Review Report 2.0 to enable the completion of a full replacement business process within this Report Type moving forward.

One notable advice scenario that it still won’t be possible to recommend within the Review Report 2.0 is DB pension transfers, as we feel this should be addressed as part of a full suitability process in the Suitability Report.

We have also added the Benefits and Features step into the Review of Your Existing Pension Plans and Review of Your Existing Retirement Income Plans sections in the Review Report 2.0 so any benefits or features of the existing plan that would be lost on ‘replacement’ can be highlighted. However, as in the Suitability Report, if this level of information isn’t required for a particular review, then simply skip the step and the benefits and features subsection won’t be included within that report.

We hope you find this change useful, and it makes the review process even more efficient for you, and clearer for your clients. Ultimately, we have only extended the functionality of the Review Report 2.0 to include the new recommendation sections should you wish to use them. For those of you who wish to continue to use the Review Report 2.0 as it was originally intended, you can still do so without any impact on the output of your resultant reports.

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