Advisers will be able to personalise the new Aegon/Cofunds platform to make it suit their needs, Mark Till has said.
The chief distribution and marketing officer at Aegon UK said one of the key things Cofunds users liked about the platform was its familiarity.
He said: “The things we typically hear that people like about Cofunds is its familiarity and they say ‘I have had it in my business for a long time and my staff know how it works’.”
He said Aegon considered that familiarity to be an “important dimension” for Cofunds users.
Mr Till added: “We are working on the basis there will be an ability to configure the usability of the platform in a way that is not currently possible.
“We want to put people in control of the way it looks and feels for them.”
Earlier today Aegon confirmed it had already built the “foundation” of the platform which will replace Cofunds.
The core of the system will be based on the Aegon Retirement Choices platform but the company has promised to include the best of both services.
He added that Aegon users would start to benefit from improvements this year, before the planned migration is expected to start at the end of the year.
Mr Till said: “The one we are working on at the moment is the ability to bring the pre-funding to Aegon users.”
But he added that while Cofund users would have to wait until they moved to the new platform to benefit from any upgrades, they would be migrated across first with Aegon users following in early 2018.
Mr Till said: “I can guarantee there will be an adviser out there who thinks what we are doing is not perfect for their business. That will inevitably happen.
“My challenge is to make sure that is by far and away the exception.”
Aegon agreed to buy Cofunds in August 2016 in a £140m deal which ended months of speculation about the future of the platform.
damian.fantato@ft.com
