For Financial Advisers Only
Our latest community session was a proper look under the bonnet of the Timeline platform. Rather than a polished pitch, it was a working walkthrough of how an adviser onboards a client from start to finish, what that client then sees in their own portal, the improvements shipped over recent months, and an early look at what is coming next. Lucas Chanet, our Platform Product Manager, drove the demo, with plenty of questions answered along the way.
The spirit of the session says it all. A custodian holds assets; a community builds the thing together, shares the roadmap honestly, and cuts friction out of the day job. Below is a recap of everything covered, so you can revisit it at your own pace.
You can watch the full recording of this session over on Wistia. The links at the foot of this page will take you deeper into the Timeline platform or let you book a live demo.
Watch the recordingAggregate a family's assets so platform fee tiers step down as the combined pot grows.
Models hold your chosen strategy; flex accounts hold cash and external assets. Models never hold cash.
Cash or in specie, partial or full, electronic or manual, with clear handling of unmatched assets.
Four role types, from no access to full access, so each team member sees only what they should.
Inherited pensions can be set up as a dedicated beneficiary account during transfer in.
A new withdrawal process from the custodian speeds up payments, including for SIPs.
A Guided Walk Through Onboarding
The onboarding flow has been designed to be quick and repeatable, so moving a book of clients across feels manageable rather than daunting. It begins with households. Grouping immediate family, a client, a spouse and children, into a single household means their assets can be aggregated for platform fee tiering, so the effective rate can step down as the combined pot grows. The same grouping can also feed tiered adviser fees.
For firms bringing over a larger book, Timeline is partnering with a data migration specialist. You share the details of the clients you want to move, potentially spread across several existing platforms, the data is cleaned and returned, and client records are created or updated automatically. The aim is that when you step into the onboarding flow, most of the information is already pre-filled. The same is true if you have already used other Timeline tools such as the fact find, so you rekey as little as possible.
From there the flow moves through wrappers, accounts, transfers, contributions, withdrawals, income and fees. The platform supports a broad set of wrappers, and every client can hold a wrapper of each type, with as many sub accounts beneath it as needed. Two account types sit underneath: model accounts, which hold whichever model you choose, and flex accounts, which hold cash or external assets such as single equities, funds and ETFs. Crucially, models never hold cash. Cash is always swept into the flex account, which keeps rebalancing efficient and gives you a clear place to pay fees from.
Transfers were a highlight. You select the ceding platform and destination account, choose partial or full, cash or in specie, and the platform handles the rest with a lot of flexibility. A cash transfer into a model is invested into the correct allocation as soon as it lands. On an in specie transfer, assets that match the model are kept, and anything that does not is swept into the flex account for you to sell or hold for as long as you like. If you are not yet sure where to invest, you can land everything in the flex account and decide later. Electronic transfers run through established transfer routes, and manual transfers are supported too.
Contributions and withdrawals follow the same clear logic: pick the account, the amount, whether it is a one off or regular, and how it is funded, by bank transfer or direct debit. Bank transfers can show up in the account within seconds, while a direct debit mandate is accepted by the client during their own portal journey. For a crystallised SIP transferring in, you can set up a regular income from the outset, ready to trigger as soon as the assets land.
Everything gathered up to this point feeds the illustrations. The platform generates a key features document and one illustration per fund and account, which you can download, sense check, and regenerate after any change. Nothing is triggered until you choose to submit the application. The final step captures the client's bank details and runs KYC and AML checks early, so future withdrawals need no extra admin. Once that is done, you send the client an email to begin their side of the journey.
What Your Client Sees
The client's journey is deliberately short. After following the email link, they set a password, review the platform terms and conditions, and see the illustrations the adviser chose to send. Everything else is gathered in one go. If a SIP has been set up, the declaration appears for one click acceptance. If contributions are due, the bank details are shown ready for the transfer. A direct debit mandate is presented for acceptance in the same flow, and any withdrawals are shown for visibility. A few clicks later the client is onboarded, transfers are triggered, and regular transactions begin processing.
Once a client is live, their portal opens on the cash flow of the financial plan you built for them, followed by the balance evolution across their accounts and a breakdown of each account's growth, balance and investments. The portal carries the firm's own branding and colours. It also includes a transactions list mirroring the adviser view, a secure messaging channel that notifies clients by email when you reach out, and a document centre showing only the documents you have chosen to share.
On the adviser side, an onboarded client's page shows every wrapper with options to deposit and withdraw, and drilling into an account reveals sub accounts, holdings, costs, values and growth, plus the ability to buy into a model, sell assets, switch model or crystallise further. Selling has been refined so you can now sell by a fixed amount, by percentage or by units, rather than always selling units with a buffer that tended to oversell slightly. The transactions list is split into needs attention, pending and completed, and transfers can be tracked along a timeline with real time status updates from the custodian and ceding providers, including clearer detail on why a transfer was rejected. Reporting spans both client level and firm level, with a set of firm reports covering AUM, growth, transfers, fees, transactions, client details and ISA allowances, all downloadable as CSV.
What Is New On The Platform
Several releases have landed recently that regular users may not have spotted yet. The biggest is team permissions. Alongside the existing controls over who can manage teams, company information and client visibility, platform firms can now assign one of four roles to each user: no access; document producer, who can generate illustrations and onboard but not submit; a role that can also submit the application; and full access, which can request transactions, trade and open new accounts. In future these will become fully customisable, toggling individual actions on and off. Advisers can also now be linked to specific colleagues, so a paraplanner can be given sight of one or two advisers' clients rather than the whole firm.
Client settings now let you decide whether a client sees only their own accounts or the whole household in their portal, which also shapes their balance charts and transactions. Beneficiary SIPs have arrived too: when transferring in a crystallised SIP, you can flag it as a beneficiary account and the platform creates the correct account type automatically. Given their nature, withdrawals from these accounts are handled a little more manually and may take an extra day or two, but otherwise work as normal.
A Sneak Peek At What Is Coming
The session closed with an early prototype of a new platform dashboard. It is still a work in progress and the detail, even the name, will change, but the direction is clear. The dashboard is designed to surface your firm's platform AUM, your number of platform clients, the clients you have onboarded who are pending approval, how long each has been waiting, and the fees received last month.
A much requested transfer workbench will show completed transfers over the last 30 days alongside rejected, in flight and stalled transfers, with the ability to click through to the full transfer timeline. Firms will also see AUM growth over time and a wrapper spread, plus a resources area gathering platform guides and walkthrough videos. This is an early step towards a broader global insights page, where you will be able to interact with Pennee to build your own graphs and business intelligence views, with the intention of extending that across the wider ecosystem over time.
The through line across all of it is friction. The team's stated objective for the year is to save advisers time, so you are not doing endless back and forth or achieving one goal in ten clicks. On the day, the session also flagged two new versions of the platform brochure, an adviser facing version and one designed to share, both available to download.
Questions From Advisers
Is there a maximum direct debit amount? None that has been encountered in practice. Direct debits are handled through the platform's direct debit partner, so any limit would sit under their rules rather than the platform's.
Can fixed fees be set to increase with inflation each year? Not yet. Increasing fees automatically, on both percentage and flat fee structures at household level, is part of the fee improvements planned for late this year or early next.
See It For Yourself
If you would like a closer look at how the platform fits into your onboarding and day to day workflow, the links below will take you deeper into Timeline or let you book a one-to-one walkthrough with our team whenever it suits you.
Important: This blog is prepared exclusively for use by financial advisers; retail distribution is at the adviser's sole risk and discretion. It does not constitute advice, an offer or a solicitation to invest.
Compiled from sources believed to be reliable. Any views, opinions or estimates expressed, including any forecasts or forward-looking statements, constitute the author's judgment at the time of writing, are not guaranteed and are subject to change without notice. None of Timeline, its directors, officers or employees accepts liability for any loss arising from the use hereof or reliance hereon or for any act or omission by any such person, or makes any representations as to its accuracy and completeness.
Timeline investing and platform services are provided by Timeline Portfolios Limited (No. 11557205), which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN: 840807). Timeline planning software and tools are provided by Timelineapp Tech Limited (No. 11405676) and are not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Both companies are registered in England and Wales with their registered office at 70 Gracechurch Street, 4th Floor, London, EC3V 0HR.
Past performance is not a guarantee of future returns. The value of investments and the income from them can fall as well as rise, and you may get back less than you invest. Transaction costs, taxes and inflation reduce investment returns. Any figures shown are historical and for illustration only. This content is intended for professional financial advisers only and does not constitute financial advice or a personal recommendation.