Over the May Bank Holiday weekend more than 400,000 users of the Cofunds retail platform and £37bn of assets were moved across to the Aegon Platform.
Aegon bought Cofunds in 2016 for £140m and has been planning the integration of the two platforms ever since.
The move was the third stage in the integration of Cofunds with Aegon, with the Investor Portfolio Service and institutional service having upgraded in December and March respectively.
More than a week after the platform switch, hundreds of advisers are having problems activating their account with one adviser, who wished to remain anonymous, stating that the issues had cost him a four-figure sum so far.
A spokesman for Aegon said: "Aegon has a complaints and compensation process as part of its regular operations and this will apply to any complaints received in the last 10 days."
Aviva, which suffered a series of problems with its own platform upgrade, has said it will make good any losses incurred by advisers as a result of glitches in its platform upgrade.
Aviva's platform was unavailable for six days beginning on the evening of 17 January and just one day after it came back online after the upgrade, investment advisers found they and their clients were locked out of the platform.
There were also problems with adviser charges not being paid out by Aviva to the advisers.
A spokesman for Aegon revealed the vast majority of their platform users had no issue with the replatform.
A spokesman for Aehon said: "The new Aegon platform has been live for just over a week. In that time over half of our regular users have activated their accounts and the volume of trades being placed are already close to the average volumes that were placed on Cofunds.
"Over 6,000 advisers have now activated their accounts and we’re aware of around 400 advisers who have experienced activation issues. We’ve trebled our phone capacity and are working quickly with those affected to ensure they have access shortly. In the long run the new platform provides a more stable technology base and will provide a better user experience and broader proposition."
Tom Turner, an adviser at Blithe House Financial Management in Southport, described his experience of being an Aegon client since the upgrade as a “sorry tale.”
Mr Turner said on 8 May he discovered he could not get into the platform, and contacted Aegon.
He said: "I was informed by Aegon that someone would call me back as there was a large amount of calls. I have never received a call back.
"I rang back on Wednesday (8 May) when we tried some new password resets but to no avail. At 5.25pm I received another email with a reset but when entered this came back as password expired?
"On Thursday (9 May) at 8.30am, my account was locked again but no help as {person he spoke with at Aegon} could do no more. Her manager was there but did not speak to me and I was transferred to head office.
"At 8.45am I spoke to a different Aegon employee. We tried six more resets but to no avail. We tried a new pin code again to no avail."
Mr Turner said he then rang just after 2pm to find the person to whom he had previously spoken was no longer available and nobody else could help.
At this point., Mr Turner said he was aware of FTAdviser’s coverage of the issue, and left a comment on our site.
He was contacted by Aegon in the messaging section of our site and urged to send an email.
He did this, and received an email stating his issue would be treated as priority and someone would contact him.
He missed a call at 4.44pm but a message was left saying the call was raised and he was given a reference number.
The next day he phoned Aegon but he said he was cut off after 13 minutes, without having spoken to anyone.
He said he was then unable to get valuations for a client.
He was contacted by Aegon to say they had no further update for him on resolving all of the issues he had highlighted, but they were able to get him the valuations he needed.
At that point he heard nothing further from Aegon for four days, from Friday (11 May) until Tuesday (15 May).
He then phoned twice, and each time was cut off after five minutes on hold.
He then phoned a different number and was told he would be called back.
At this point Mr Turner gave Aegon a deadline or informed them he would contact FTAdviser.
He has not heard from them as the deadline whistled past, and said: "I am now at a point of no return and throwing all I can at this shower. I have clients waiting on monies and I have clients waiting on investing monies."
After FTAdviser took Mr Turner's complaint to Aegon, the provider contacted him and said to us: “The recent upgrade of the Cofunds platform onto Aegon technology was incredibly large and complicated, and touched more intermediaries and customers than any other similar project in the industry.
"We’re encouraged that more than 15,000 users have activated their accounts and are accessing records and trading. We are actively managing adviser issues and we are speaking to the adviser to alleviate his particular issue.”
david.thorpe@ft.com
