Origo, the e-commerce standards and services body for the financial services sector, has signed up Talbot & Muir as its 75th brand for the Options Transfers service.
Talbot and Muir, an independent Sipp and SSAS specialist, is the latest to join Origo’s service and Origo says more companies in the contract and the occupational pensions markets are set to join up.

Origo’s Options Transfers service was launched in 2008 and offers a full pension transfers service enabling pension pots of all sizes to be transferred in cash and ‘in-specie’.

The Options service includes a wide range of pension providers and platforms as well as schemes and third-party administrators (TPAs) in the market. It has handled over £70bn of transfers between pensions providers and platforms since launch, as well as facilitating re-registration of Isa, General Investment Accounts and pensions assets, and currently processes around 50,000 transfers a month.

Claire Trott, director at Talbot and Muir, said: “Origo’s Options Transfers service has the ability to transfer pensions either in-specie or in cash, or a combination of both, which is invaluable for Sipp providers like ourselves.”

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Paul Pettitt, managing director of Origo, said: “The fast and efficient transfer of pensions and assets is a major issue for the pensions industry. This is where the benefits of automated processing of transfers, as delivered by the Options Transfers service, are so easily demonstrated, significantly speeding up the transfer process (from weeks to days and in some cases minutes), increasing cost-efficiencies, reducing risk and providing a far improved customer outcome.

“There is no doubt that the government’s increasing focus on transfers, due in part to Pension Freedoms, is introducing new challenges for providers, administrators and trustees, and the Options Transfers service helps to relieve this pressure.”

Origo was launched by a group of the UK’s leading financial institutions in 1989 to facilitate the development of electronic trading between principals and agents for Life, Pensions and Collective Investment business. It is a not-for-profit organisation.