Friends Life may offer multi-asset funds when it launches its retail platform in April next year, its chief executive has confirmed.
The life company yesterday announced an April 2015 launch date for the platform, which will offer customers ISA and investment accounts alongside flexible drawdown income products. The platform will be open architecture.
The development of the platform comes after the government released details of wide-ranging pension reforms, designed to broaden the options available to pensioners other than annuities.
Friends Life UK interim chief executive Andy Curran said the firm is in the process of understanding what the client needs, and is considering multi-asset or multi-manager style funds.
Curran said: “Your typical mass market consumer would probably want to not take too many risks but still get an investment return which is above our current interest rates. We need to work out which construction of funds might be appealing.
“Unlike some life company peers, apart from our fixed interest capacity we do not own any in-house equity managers. So in terms of our view of fund of fund choices, we really do have an open mind.”
Friends Life is aiming to capitalise on its existing customer base of mass affluent savers. Curran said: “This platform will be launched with the starting assumption of working with our existing customers base. Should it appeal to a wider market that would be fine.”
According to the firm’s interim results, the platform will allow customers to take a portion of their pension savings as tax-free cash, with the remainder invested in a flex-income drawdown product. It will also offer annuities.
