Aegon is dealing with a third consecutive day of problems since the service was replatformed over the bank holiday weekend and has asked advisers struggling to sign-in to "bear with us".
As FTAdviser previously reported, Aegon has acknowledged there have been “teething problems” with its platform, as it integrated the Cofunds business it bought in 2016.
But today (10 May) FTAdviser has learnt that some advisers are struggling to activate their account, leading to high levels of demand on Aegon's contact centre as advisers call in for support.
Sam Caunt, an adviser at Moerae Financial Planning in Northampton, said: "This is now the third day and I have no access to clients and the back office link still does not work. Maybe, just maybe, when I come back from my holidays it will work.
"However, they have already broken promises to keep the functionality of Cofunds which we and our clients valued and in our eyes Aegon have ruined what was a very basic platform and the benefits such as ETFs and direct equities are marginal for most clients."
Will Driver, a financial adviser at the firm of Fresh Perspective in Corsham, Wiltshire, said his log-in details stopped being recognised following the sign-in verification process.
He was told yesterday morning that there were technical issues and that he would be called back but he wasn't.
Mr Driver said: "After 25 minutes call-waiting I was told there were more technical issues, no resolution to our login issues, and that they couldn't locate any of the client accounts I quoted.”
An Aegon spokesperson said: “In an exceptionally busy week for our upgraded platform 11,200 users have now activated their accounts and customers are trading on the service. All our checks show that the migration and reconciliation of customer records to the Aegon Platform has worked as planned.
“We are aware that some advisers are struggling to activate their account and this is leading to high levels of demand on our contact centre as advisers call in for support.
"We planned for high levels of demand but are continuing to add extra telephone lines, extend opening hours and automate parts of the process to bring down waiting times. We would ask that advisers bear with us and we aim to resolve any access problems quickly.
“We’ve been working closely with back office system providers to ensure they are able to connect to us to display data to their users. We expect to have all systems fully integrated shortly.
“Prior to the launch of the new platform we undertook extensive testing of systems, but projects of this nature are inherently complex and it’s only in a live environment you can truly put processes to the test. Where advisers have flagged issues, we are working as quickly as possible to put them right.”
david.thorpe@ft.com
