Following significant investment in research and development, GBST’s Catalyst enables the creation of modern digital products and solutions that seamlessly integrate with existing robust GBST systems. The new digital platform replaces the current Composer® Web platform and will provide clients with a highly-configurable solution that offers multi-device access, can be integrated into a client’s existing website and is fully customisable to their own look and feel. Clients have the option to maintain the system themselves or partner with GBST’s new UK based digital team.

The digital platform provides advisers the ability to onboard and service their customers, with access to illustrations, applications, transfers, client management and document storage, all accessed, delivered, actioned and stored via a simple, secure online interface. End investors can also onboard and service their account, with access to their daily valuations, holdings and all documents relating to their investments on their desktop, tablet or phone.

The key features of the new platform include:
• Fully responsive design, responding to the needs of different users and the devices they are using
• The ability for clients to fully customise the user experience and integrate with leading web analytics and content management software
• The option for advisers and end investors to personalise their own dashboards based on the information that is important to them
• An onboarding journey for ISAs, GIAs and SIPPs for advisers and end investors
• Online servicing journeys to support at retirement flexi access drawdown
• A strong security layer which supports Single Sign On and Multi-Factor Authentication
• Refreshed integration layer into Composer® back-office utilising REST API services
• The facility to combine data from Composer® back-office, client legacy policy administration systems and other non-GBST data sources to present consolidated client views and deliver straight through processing services
• Access to a range of engaging retirement and savings tools and the ability to integrate with other leading tools in the market
• Suite of support services including notifications and mobile messaging
• Multi-lingual / multi-currency capability

David Simpson, Head of EMEA at GBST, commented: “This is a really exciting development for GBST. Our clients and prospects are increasingly focussed on the digital customer experience to drive servicing costs down and deliver the overall experience that consumers demand today. Yet the real complexity of any digital project is the integration to the back-end platform, with around 80% of budgets consumed there rather than in delivering a world class user experience. This latest development means our clients can reduce the cost of development and increase speed to market with our pre-integrated solution into the back-office and at the same time deliver a fully customised user experience.”

He continues: “Importantly, the new platform is compatible with the latest industry standard architecture so for the first time we are able to integrate with non-GBST systems to provide a single view of the end-investor’s policies in the front-end portal. We recognise that not all our clients are in the position to migrate all policies on day one – most will typically move to a single policy administration platform over three to five years or retain other specialist systems. With our new platform technology, we can now support this transition period by aggregating the data from different legacy systems into a single, joined up experience for end-customers and advisers.”

Kevin Okell, Director, Altus Consulting, added: “Many of the challenges we see with big platform projects are really about the way they integrate with other systems. So it’s good to see the likes of GBST investing in this area to offer more granular integration options for their clients. With so much focus on digital we expect to see more platform providers extending their capabilities in this space which can only be good for the market”.