Fuel up your clients’ future
Easy to use, offering value for money and the ability to invest across the whole Cofunds fund universe, the Cofunds Pension Account can bring real power to your retirement planning solutions. Alastair Conway, Cofunds Marketing & Proposition Director, takes a closer look
Retirement planning is a major element of most advisers’ business. Being able to use the full functionality of a financial planning platform such as Cofunds to deliver pre and post-retirement solutions across your whole clientbase is a powerful business advantage. Now Cofunds has made that even easier to do with the launch of the Cofunds Pension Account.
The Cofunds Pension Account has been designed in close cooperation with advisers as a simple yet powerful way to deliver retirement solutions, leveraging the full strength of Cofunds investment choice, tools and support.
Having spoken to advisers extensively, we understood there was a huge appetite for a retirement-planning solution that’s
- really, really simple
- can offer the investment scope of a SIPP
- doesn’t have the complex charges associated with some SIPPs
- can be managed from start to finish using platform functionality.
Quite simply, the Cofunds Pension Account is a pension that can be used to invest across the full range of 1,300-plus funds available on Cofunds, covering every key market, sector and investment strategy1
With such vast investment choice, the Cofunds Pension Account can meet the investment needs of the majority of clients across each stage of their retirement planning journey – from younger clients looking to maximise growth, to those in or approaching retirement who need to be more cautious, to retirees moving to an income strategy to support drawdown.
And for the small minority of clients who need the investment scope of a full SIPP (eg access to individual securities and other assets), their needs can be met with the other SIPP solutions hosted on Cofunds.
Value for money
One criticism sometimes levied at SIPPs is that their charging structure fails to make them as suitable as stakeholder pensions for the majority of investors. The Cofunds Pension Account therefore looks to offer a transparent value-for-money charging structure that can pass suitability criteria for most clients. Charging features include:
- a one-off set-up fee of £150
- an annual fee that’s waived for year 1, then tiered – see below
- FREE fund switching
- All fund trades dealt at net asset value/creation price plus commission.
The account is also designed so clients only pay for features such as income drawdown if and when they use them. In this way, clients are not at risk of paying for add-ons they don’t need.
No annual pension charge for £200K+ clients
More assets – lower charges
The Cofunds Pension Account can even actively reward clients for bringing more assets on platform, thanks to its tiered annual charging structure.
This is because all of a client’s assets on Cofunds – not just pension assets – are taken into account. Once a client has more than £100,000 in assets on Cofunds, the annual fee reduces from £150 to £100 (see graphic). Once a client has £200,000 or more on Cofunds there is no annual charge at all for the pension account.
Combine this with free fund switching and fund dealing at NAV/creation and clients have one of the best-value fund SIPPs on the market.
Free transfers to August 2010
The Cofunds Pension Account is also designed to be a powerful tool for consolidating pension assets on platform.
It can accept a range of existing pension assets, including protected rights. Cofunds can provide comprehensive support in managing transfers. This includes an enhanced tracking service so the status of a transfer can be checked through the Cofunds website.
What’s more, until August 2010, pension assets can be transferred into the Cofunds Pension Account free of charge (thereafter a £75 fee applies for each transfer-in).
In short….
The Cofunds Pension Account offers
SIMPLICITY – it invests in collectives only. It is therefore ideal for the vast majority of clients, who want the flexibility of a SIPP but who really don’t need the ability to invest in directly-held securities or other assets.
CHOICE – It lets your clients invest in a range of 1,300 collectives, enabling you to meet the retirement-planning needs of most clients.
VALUE – a one-off set-up fee, free fund switching, fund dealing at NAV/creation, plus an annual fee that is waived for the first year and reduces for £100K+ clients
Total planning online
As this is Cofunds, the Pension Account can be managed completely online from creating client illustrations to selecting and arranging funds and reviewing client progress. If you wish, a client can have access to online trading on their Cofunds Pension Account (as well as all their other investments on Cofunds) through your own branded microsite – a compelling way to add value for more experienced clients.
The Cofunds Pension Account can be viewed and managed alongside all of a client’s other investments on Cofunds and will be included as part of the client’s annual statement and valuation. In this way, a comprehensive investment strategy can be implemented across all of a client’s investments – enabling them to see the real value of holding multiple investments on platform.
At retirement, the client has total flexibility to choose how to take benefits, including phasing, income drawdown and fee-free transfer to an annuity. If a client wants access to an alternatively secured pension (ASP) at age 75, they can easily upgrade to the Suffolk Life MasterSIPP on Cofunds to gain that functionality.
Retirement solutions for every client
In short, the Cofunds Pension Account is one more way that Cofunds is aiming to help advisers deliver exceptional financial-planning solutions simply and competitively to each and every client. Using Cofunds choice and functionality we hope it will make your retirement-planning proposition even more powerful.
Want to know more?
Go to cofunds.co.uk/pensions or call us on 0845 604 4001 (Calls may be recorded)