Aegon completed shifted 79,000 non-advised Cofunds customers to the newly enhanced Investor Portfolio Service over Christmas.
According to Aegon bosses the Cofunds users, who are predominantly customers of building societies, will now have access to “a slicker and more modern service” with less paper and better online access enabled for mobile and tablet devices.
The acquisition of Cofunds completed on 1 January 2017 and over the last 12 months Aegon has been pursuing a technology upgrade approach to combine what bosses describe as “the best of both the Aegon and Cofunds services.”
Unlike a traditional replatforming exercise, which typically means the build of a platform and migration of customers to it, Aegon bosses said they are taking established platform technology and adding functionality and data to it.
The next phase of the project will involve the Cofunds intermediated book, which is due to be shifted across to the new version of the platform in May.
Mark Till, chief distribution and marketing officer at Aegon, said to aide advisers, a communications programme is well underway, to update them of what they can expect from the service and how the upgrade will be managed.
To support this programme, Mr Till said training modules and a suite of supporting documentation such as tutorials and Q&As will shortly be made available.
Mr Till said: "We've completed the first big milestone as we seek to combine the best of the Aegon and Cofunds services.
"The successful upgrade of 79,000 IPS customers to a more modern service based on Aegon’s platform technology gives us a great deal of confidence in our approach.
"In May we plan to upgrade the intermediated part of the Cofunds’ book and the project is very much on budget and on track."
Back in October, Aegon bosses confirmed they will end Cofunds as a separate platform in a move that was described as "inevitable" by advisers.
Aegon acquired Cofunds for £140m in August 2016.
Aegon announced in an effort to “simplify” its offering to advisers it will abolish Cofunds as a separate platform and brand and move all clients to a new version of the Aegon platform.
emma.hughes@ft.com
