7IM has added a guaranteed income option to its platform’s self-invested personal pension with the help of retirement product provider Just Group.
The feature allows advisers to offer their clients a guaranteed income producing asset alongside existing drawdown options and other investment strategies.
Called ‘Secure Lifetime Income’, the solution was based on feedback 7IM’s founder, Verona Kenny, and her team received following the introduction of pension freedoms in 2015. 7IM and Just began discussing the idea three years ago.
“One of the big bits of feedback we got was the need for more flexibility in the way clients take income from their portfolios,” Kenny told FTAdviser.
“Most advisers sitting down to plan their client’s retirement will look at what income is needed to cover essentials. That should be in every income plan. And then discretionary spend, and what they plan to leave to the next generation.
“As a platform, we wanted to make this more efficient. Just’s product helps solve a major risk for advisers - it gives guaranteed income for a client’s life, and takes away the worry of the client having enough money.”
Every month, income will be paid into 7IM’s Sipp. Advisers can then reinvest this money via income drawdown - which now includes a guaranteed income option - or leave it in the Sipp.
Currently, the product is available to any client and their adviser using the 7IM platform.
The platform manages around £14.1bn of assets on behalf of 35,623 clients and their 2,015 advisers.
Asked why Just decided to launch the feature exclusively with 7IM, the product provider’s communications director Steve Lowe said it came down to the platform’s focus on retirement.
“They’re also really smart people with some great tech. It’s the first time we’ve been challenged to integrate our tech in this way, because it’s been rebuilt all inside 7IM.”
At present, 7IM offers a full retirement income service under discretionary, but Kenny is set on transferring this end-to-end service to the platform.
Last month (April 29), 7IM made a series of changes to its platform in an effort to “streamline” the process of portfolio management for advisers on behalf of their clients.
It added a new screen for managing model portfolios which allows advisers to see how much is currently invested and when they started investing.
The dedicated screen can then link and unlink client portfolios to specific models.
It has also introduced audit reports to track which clients have invested in a model portfolio, in order to speed up access for advisers to historical client data.
ruby.hinchliffe@ft.com
