Platforms endangering life companies, warns Suffolk Life
Platforms pose the biggest threat to life companies, according to Suffolk Life's John Moret.
Mr Moret, director of sales and marketing at the specialist provider, said there was far greater competition, particularly in the pension arena, in what was historically life company territory.
He said platforms were now the key to excelling in the life and pensions sector and urged large life insurance companies to get involved with them if they were to compete with the smaller specialist companies.
At first the big life companies ignored the idea of platforms, according to Mr Moret, but now the likes of Standard Life, Axa Winterthur and Friends Provident are all seeing the benefits a platform has to offer.
Last month Aviva relaunched its wrap and self-invested personal pension platform for the third time. Aegon is in the process of developing a platform, with an imminent launch anticipated.
Mr Moret said: "Platforms are the biggest threat to life companies. If you do not have one then you have a problem, you will have to think hard about how to survive as a large player in the life and pensions sector."
However, the number of platforms in the UK has mushroomed in recent years, causing some to label the growth in the sector unsustainable.
Industry experts, such as David Ferguson, chief executive of Nucleus, have long predicted a period of consolidation in the platform market once life companies finished launching their own platform propositions.
