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The new trust will allow investors to make gifts exempt from inheritance tax after seven years while maintaining access to the trust through preset regular withdrawals.

The Bare Discounted Gift trust complements Aegon Scottish Equitable’s bare gift, discretionary gift, bare loan, discretionary loan and discretionary discounted gift trusts.

All six are available with the companies’ bond products, including onshore bond and the guaranteed investment control product.

Aegon Scottish Equitable has also produced a "trusts decision tree" that asks customers how much control and flexibility they want, if access to capital may be required and whether they need access to investment growth. An online version of the decision tree is being developed.

Margaret Jago, technical manager at Aegon Scottish Equitable, said: “This new trust allows for greater flexibility and control for the customer to decide who benefits from their assets and when.”

With the number of trusts available in the market and the many differences between them, she said, trust planning can be "challenging" for customers to understand, and the decision-making process can be "very confusing".

She said: "With Aegon Scottish Equitable’s ‘trust decision tree’, both the adviser and their customers can carefully select the benefits they would like to receive from a trust plan and make the decision that is in their best interests.”