Legal & General’s (L&G) sale of the Cofunds platform to Aegon has officially completed, and more details of Aegon’s plans for the platform have been revealed.
Aegon bought Cofunds from L&G for £140 million in August. The deal makes Aegon the largest advised platform provider in the UK.
Aegon chief executive Adrian Grace (pictured), said: ‘Today marks the start of a new era for both Aegon and Cofunds. The completion takes us a major step further in our transition from traditional life company to fully-fledged platform business.
‘Our focus now is to help intermediaries grow their business, grow their profitability and manage their risk and costs effectively.’
In August Aegon said it would set up an advisory board to bring together 20 to 30 firms who represent duifferent types of intermediaries. The board met for the first time in December.
Aegon told the board it will not go through a replatforming exercise but bring the two platforms together through a technology upgrade approach.
Aegon said its approach will differ from a traditional replatforming exercise, which, it said, typically means building a platform and migrating customers to it. Instead the technology upgrade will take an established platform and add functionality and data.
Aegon said Cofunds users will get access to a wider product range including the use of exchange traded funds, investment trusts, shares and an integrated pension. While those who currently use the Aegon platform will take on existing Cofunds features like pre-funding of trades, debit card acceptance and an improvement to the investment selection process. Access to this additional functionality will begin to roll out in the second half of 2017.
When the deal was announced Aegon said it expected to make an annual saving of £60 million across it UK business following the deal.
Cofunds will be continue to be run by current chief executive David Hobbs. Other staff working at the platform will be transferred to Aegon.
Aegon also bought L&G’s execution only platform Investor Portoflio Service.
It will also continue to work with Cofund’s institutional clients. Aegon said at the time that pricing would ‘be maintained or improved’ following the deal.
Source: CityWire