The consolidator is to acquire the life company's book of insurance contracts, including annuities and workplace pensions, as part of a £3bn deal announced to the stock exchange today (23 February).
Phoenix told FTAdviser it "will not be changing their terms and conditions in any way", including the fees and charges currently in place for the products.
Meanwhile, Standard Life has written to advisers confirming there would be no changes to its strategy for on-platform clients, who it will retain.
But Dave Penny, managing director of Invest Southwest, said there could be trouble ahead, including potential client grabs.
He said: "In my experience I have very rarely investigated a policy now under the control of Phoenix without reaching the conclusion that charging structure, service levels and performance of the product are poor or quite simply out of date, whether it contains an insurance element or not.
"So this is almost certainly good news for the corporates in their cash generation and bad news for clients. I imagine it will result in more amendments being necessary and more work for us."
But Alistair Cunningham, financial planner at Wingate Financial Planning, who also has Standard Life clients and has experienced a client transfer to Phoenix before, expected business as usual.
He said: "Because it is mainly historic business it does not mean an awful lot for new clients and for us as a firm.
"We mainly have platform clients and they are keeping their platform."
Mr Cunningham said when Axa clients were moved to Phoenix in May 2016 he hadn't faced issues and the policies' fees had remained the same.
Kusal Ariyawansa, a chartered financial planner at Manchester-based Appleton Gerrard, was also unperturbed by the news.
He said: "I have got legacy clients with both and Standard Life has been in touch with me today saying it is business as usual. I don't see there being any change from my end as it doesn't affect my core clients really."
The deal will see £166bn of insurance assets moved to Phoenix, while Standard Life Aberdeen will retain the core of its retail channel and position itself as a 'capital light' investment business.
The financial services giant already owns adviser platforms Wrap, Elevate and Parmenion and financial advice business 1825.
Since the acquisition of Elevate in October 2016 its assets under administration (AUA) have grown 16 per cent to £12.9bn, bringing the combined AUA on the platforms to £54bn, an increase of 22 per cent over 2016, the firm's results showed today (23 February).
Standard Life Aberdeen also agreed a long-term strategic partnership with Phoenix after taking a 19.99 per cent stake in the firm.
In particular, it is eyeing further investment management mandates through Phoenix, alongside the £158bn of assets it already manages.
The firm had lost a £109bn asset management mandate for Lloyds' Scottish Widows business earlier this month but a new deal could now be in the works.
It is understood the original deal had fallen apart over competing interests between the insurance businesses of Scottish Widows and Standard Life, which are now void.
Phoenix, meanwhile, has already set its sights on further expansion.
The consolidator already has £240bn of legacy assets and 10.4 million policyholders after today's (23 February) deal but believes it will be able to capitalise further on an impending market split into businesses willing to commit capital to underwrite risks and others looking to generate capital-light fee generating products, such as Standard Life Aberdeen.
"Based on our latest analysis we believe that there remains around £380bn of assets in the UK closed life market, excluding Standard Life Assurance," a spokesman for Phoenix told FTAdviser.
It is estimated the total size of the market, including Germany, Ireland and bulk purchase annuities, amounts to more than £1trn.
But Laith Khalaf, senior analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, took a more cautious view of impending market moves.
He said: "Looking at big bits of life insurers you could see the Pru (Prudential) possibly looking to offload their book, but not Aviva and L&G.
"Much of the consolidation in the life sector actually took place around 10 years ago and much of it is sitting in what we know as Phoenix today."
The pension market has undoubtedly changed since pension freedoms were announced in April 2014. Annuity sales have suffered a sharp drop, while investment management and on-platform business boomed.
At the same time, workplace pensions experienced an uplift with the introduction of auto-enrolment, which is expected to see a total of £17bn a year going into workplace pensions by 2019 to 2020.
Only this week Lloyds Bank announced major plans to re-enter the space.
But Mr Cunningham believed those moves were geared more towards the direct to consumer space.
He predicted further consolidation in the platform space, however, where he saw "massive" competition among similarly structured players.
He said: “There will be more consolidation amongst platforms, amongst asset managers, and Phoenix are an obvious home for the life stuff, the old style pensions that are not on platforms. I actually think they are pretty good at what they do."
carmen.reichman@ft.com
