Aegon also launched One Retirement off the same platform – a pensions-only platform (or ‘pension’), making it the king of thrift in terms of reusing tech. Expect to see more platforms and providers – from Prudential to lots of the Sipp providers – launching platform-style pensions which can enable the new retirement freedoms and also talk nicely to other technologies advisers may be using.
Round up...
And a couple of quickies to round us off. Client reporting was a big theme this year, and will be next year. From Sammedia’s MoneyInfo – now approaching ubiquity – through to Sprint Enterprise’s Fastrak (which enjoyed a 15 per cent investment from Transact), the idea that data aggregation from lots of places can lead to better, more engaging client reporting is a persuasive one. More please.
Also more please for deeper integrations. We’ve seen some good work between Iress and AXA, Zurich and DT and green shoots with Intelligent Office links. Others have been working away too. This might be the fairy on top of the Christmas tree for advisers – could we circle back round to altruism and work together to rid the world of the plague of rekeying? We can but hope.
So there it is. Next year – many, many new pensions products; lots of post-launch catch-up for all the tricky bits of regulation; re-platforming again; greater work on integration and reporting; and, hopefully, a bit of work on user experience. We’re collectively sick of online wizards – they are horrible and don’t even do any good magic tricks. And auto-enrolment systems will still suck.
Whatever comes, it’ll be fun, we’ll write about it here, and inch by inch the industry will slide into something resembling the 21st century.
Mark Polson is principal of platform specialist consultancy, the lang cat.
