Aegon UK embarks on investment and commercial team redundancies as part of 'cost-cutting' exercise

Three redundancies so far

Aegon UK made staff redundant from its investment management team as part of a series of major cost cutting measures, Investment Week can reveal.

Lee Dickens, senior fund manager at Aegon UK, posted on LinkedIn that "due to cost-cutting at Aegon UK", he was made redundant and will be leaving the firm in mid-February 2026.

IW understands that other staff have also been let go by the firm as part of this wider money saving move, particularly from Aegon Investments.

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There, the eleven-strong team has seen a mixture of investment specialists and analysts depart. Three were let go via redundancy while one member resigned.

In an internal staff email seen by IW, Aegon UK CEO Jim Ewing contacted all its finance teams on 6 November to announce a series changes and redundancies to its commercial finance and portfolio management teams, claiming that "financial performance is not where it needs to be to deliver [its] medium term plan".

As a result, the investment proposition team will move from the finance department into the marketing department while the portfolio management wing will change into a "more efficient team structure", which involves role removals and remaining employees taking on "additional responsibilities".

Lorna Blyth was brought in to lead the firm's investment proposition in 2021 for a then newly created role of investment proposition director.

According to Aegon UK's website, its investment proposition "aims to complement advisers' business models by catering for a wide variety of client needs".

When she joined, Blyth - who is still in the role - was reporting to managing director for business solutions Tim Orton but according to the email, she will now be overseen by chief marketing officer Andy Mason from here on out.

The firm advertised a Workplace Investment Proposition manager job seven months ago on LinkedIn which at the time, reporting into head of investment strategy Niall Aitken.

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In the email, Ewing said Aegon UK is also "re-aligning" its commercial finance teams in a bid to "streamline our support model".

Ewing said that the business was becoming "simpler, with the adviser business now focused on fewer accounts and we are focused on reducing system administration costs".

The UK CEO said it was crucial that is "development activities...align with the business priorities" which means "increased automation and the reduction in manual reporting will also reduce some activities going forwards".

As with the investment team, this will see a "small number of roles" removed to "avoid duplication".

The respective employees in these investment and commercial team roles have been identified as "at risk" and have been informed of the possibility of redundancy, according to Ewing.

A spokesperson for Aegon UK told IW "like any business, we continuously review our plans and adapt as necessary to ensure we are operating as effectively and efficiently as possible".

"As such, a small number of roles have been impacted as we continue the delivery of the three-year strategy we set out in June 2024," they said.

Aegon UK is a subsidiary of the Dutch insurer Aegon and in the latter's Q3 2025 trading update, CEO Lard Friese specifically highlighted net outflows in the UK business and attributed them to "the departure of two large, low-margin schemes".

Bloomberg also reported yesterday (26 November) that the Dutch firm was considering selling off some of its non-US assets.