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David Thompson, managing director of sales and marketing of Axa Winterthur, said the provider was finalising details of its new Sipp but he was able to reveal one of the key features of the new offering would be administration done in-house. Administration is currently outsourced to Capita.

Earlier this month about £100bn of protected rights money was able to go into Sipps.

Oxford-based discretionary funds manager Courtiers added it had decided to launch an offering because it had observed high Sipp charges were eating into investment returns.

Jamie Shepperd, chief executive of Courtiers, said Courtiers' Sipp would accept protected rights, unquoted shares and commercial property.

He said it was a free Sipp as there were no up-front fees, transactions or asset under management charges.

Mr Shepperd said: "There could be up to £800 coming out of a Sipp to run it. Because we are discretionary fund managers we have a payment agreement in line with the retail distribution review between us and our clients.

"We have a statement of our investment principles, which is a document the client signs up to. By providing a discretionary funds service, IT and administration we can share part of the remuneration with the IFA."

Mark Andrews, adviser of Manchester-based IFA Red Swan, said he had seen an increase in the number of people inquiring about Sipps since protected rights were able to go into them.

He said: "I do not know a lot about those companies that are offering new Sipps. It is more of a case of what those Sipps are supposed to do.

"Self-invested pensions could be seen as ways of getting funds into respective companies. Also, are they real Sipps or are they a personal pension product that calls itself a Sipp?"