Investments, Additional Purchases

Durell allows additional purchases (e.g. to a single premium bond) or premium increases (e.g. to a savings policy) to be handled in different ways, as applicable to the real life event…

1. POLICY VARIATION. If possible, each additional purchase or premium increase should be processed as a variation (see “Life, Variations & Clawback”). A variation retains the same policy number, but can have its own compliance and commission, and will appear (like a separate policy) in all reports and valuations.

2. NEW POLICY. On the other hand, if the investment company issues a new contract, with its own contract number, then this should be processed through the creation of a new policy record (see “Policies, Create A New Policy”).

3. PURCHASE TOP-UPS. However certain investment companies do not always treat additional lump sum purchases as true variations or new contracts, but rather as “top-ups” to the existing investment, in which case you can add a “Purchase, top-up” event (i.e. “Between acquisition and closure”) to the base policy, as described below. An example of this would be where a number of existing pensions are transferred over a period of time into a single new one, so each successive transfer tops-up the new policy. Each such top-up may have its own compliance and commission, though otherwise it is just an event within the same policy.

4. VARY REGULAR PREMIUM. Where a regular premium is to be increased or decreased you are advised to create one event to end the current premium, and a second to re-start premium contributions at the revised amount, all as described in “Investments, Changing a Regular Premium”. This is also the case for pensions that have initial units for a period of time, followed by accumulation units (i.e. different types of funds), even though the actual premium does not vary.

Showing Variations

If you’ve created a policy variation (option 1, above) for the additional purchase/s then you can view the varied fund details from the base policy by setting the “Filter” dropdown at the bottom right of the screen to “Include Variations”, then clicking the “Apply filter” button.

Purchase Top-ups

To add a purchase top-up (option 3, above) starting from the “Transactions” screen displaying funds, as shown below…

• Click the “Add” button
• Select “Add an event”

On the “Edit Event” pop-up, as shown below…

• Set the “Event type” to “Transaction between acquisition and closure”
• Set the “Action” to “Purchase, top-up”
• Enter the value of the top-up in the “Nett” field (n.b. there is no tax in this case)
• Enter the “Per” field (e.g. as “Single)
• Enter the date of the top-up in the “From” field

• Click the “Add” button

• On the “Add Fund to Event…” pop-up, as shown above, either…
1. choose one of the existing funds, or
2. click the “Add fund” button to add an entirely new fund, as shown below…

• After adding the fund or funds, you should return to the “Edit Event” screen, as shown below, where you’ll see them listed

• At this point you may choose to either…
1. save and close the event with the “OK” button, then return to it later via the “Edit” button on the “Events” screen, as shown below, or

2. immediately tick the “Include compliance” and “Include commission” boxes, then click their associated buttons
• …the only difference being that if you proceed immediately you’ll be prompted to save the event as you go. In either case you’ll be able to return subsequently to the top-up event (via the “Edit” button on the “Events” screen) to edit its commission or compliance details.
• If you click the “Compliance” button you’ll be asked whether you’d like to copy the base policy’s details or enter new ones, after which you’ll be taken to the standard compliance pop-up (see “Compliance and New Business Processing”).

• If you click the “Commission” button you’ll be taken to the standard commission screen, as shown below, where you should enter the commission details, then move onto the next screen and post it to the accounts (see “Life Policies, Commission”).

Having completed the top-up you should now find that…

• You have a separate commission entry for it in your accounts
• It appears as part of the base policy in the valuation report
• It appears as a separate entry in the “Proposed” and “Submitted business” type of reports