Aegon soft launches platform and confirms charges

As exclusively reported by FTAdviser sister title Financial Adviser last week, Aegon has taken its first step into the platform market with the initial launch of its new Aegon Retirement Choices platform.

The new platform, which aims to help customers get more from their retirement savings, has been developed using technology supplied by GBST and provided by Novia.

Aegon said that Retirement Choices focuses on people who have accumulated savings and investments throughout their working lives and are now planning for their retirement and thinking about how and when they will start taking a retirement income.

It will offer customers tax wrappers including self-invested personal pensions, Isas and general investment accounts. The investment proposition allows access to Aegon insured funds, offshore bonds, collectives and other investment types.

The charging structure for the platform is unbundled, including an aggregate platform charge of between 0.6 and 0.2 per cent annually, along with adviser and investment charges.

Aegon aims to make the new platform fully available to the wider market in 2012 and also plans to launch a workplace savings platform focused on the needs of employers and employees in the first six months of next year.

Gordon Greig, platform director for Aegon UK, said: “Bringing our new platform proposition to market is the start of a new chapter for Aegon UK.

“We’re adopting a phased roll out approach, so will initially work with a limited cross-section of advisers who have been selected on the basis of being at differing stages of developing their own businesses – perhaps currently using a platform to help this and perhaps not.

“We’ll work with these advisers to address the specific challenges and concerns they have as they evolve their business models ahead of RDR.”