Continually improving our platform

In November we introduced Online nomination of beneficiaries. Your clients with a SIPP or Drawdown product can now add or edit their beneficiaries quickly and easily from their Client summary screen, making it even easier for them to take control of their pension savings. You can view any beneficiaries nominated after March 2023 and you’ll soon have the ability to add and manage beneficiaries.

In October we introduced new features to the Product summary screens based on your feedback:

• You and your clients can view drip-feed drawdown income details at a glance. To view the income amount, tax free cash payment, payment frequency, the date of next payment, bank details, and tax code, just open up the SIPP drawdown Product summary screen.
• We've added a label to help you quickly identify beneficiary drawdown pensions and a new Tax considerations section will help you identify which clients may need to pay tax on income from a beneficiary drawdown pension.

In September we introduced five key improvements as part of our commitment to continually improve your platform experience:

1. You can now use one user ID and password to view your ARC, One Retirement and/or Aegon Platform clients. You'll also be able to access Report Zone and, depending on your permissions, transact and carry out user administration tasks, using the same login details.
2. It's now easy to compare the current investment allocation to your chosen investment strategy and view pending trades - just navigate to the Investments tab of a client's product summary.
3. Non-adviser users can now instantly see which adviser is linked to a client in the Client details section of a client's product summary.
4. You asked us to reintroduce the Switch summary, so you can now find it in the Change existing investments request.
5. You also told us that it took too long to select investments for your clients, so we've significantly improved the response time in the Investment selection screens.

Dashboard improvements - you can now update email addresses easily, access restricted share classes quicker and we’ve added client IDs to the Client summary screen to make it easier to search for your clients.

Company and trustee access - we’ve rolled out the new experience to companies and trustees, so they can benefit from a more secure, intuitive online experience.

We’re investing in technology and automation to become a more focused and efficient business.

Extending our opening hours - we've listened to your feedback and extended our opening hours -  helping you and your clients get in touch with us at times that work for you.  You can now get in touch from 8.30am to 5.30pm Monday to Friday.

Digitising verification - we’re piloting a new customer verification solution on ARC and One Retirement,  to reduce security risks and speed up the process. Results from the pilot have been very positive, with significant improvements on initial pass rates, good uptake and the successful introduction of a digital biometric solution. Ahead of a full roll out, we're extending the pilot to include even more transactions, including one-off withdrawals and income payments. Find out more

Streamlining transfers in and out

We’re continuing to invest in increased automation of our end-to-end processes to streamline your experience and make it easier to do business with us:

• Introducing withdrawal and transfer out confirmations - to make sure you and your clients know exactly what to expect from us, we've introduced emails to keep you up to date with the progress of key money out requests, like withdrawals and transfers.*                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          If we have an email address on record, our new automated emails will let you and your Aegon Retirement Choices, Aegon Platform and One Retirement clients know we've received the request, what the next steps are and expected timescales. When the withdrawal or transfer is complete, we’ll send you both a confirmation email.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                *Email confirmations are currently unavailable for the following transactions: 
  • Aegon Platform - starting or changing a regular withdrawal and setting up an ad-hoc withdrawal.
  • Aegon Retirement Choices and One Retirement - adding a benefit crystallisation event.
• To improve the availability of transfer information, we’ve increased the number of  fund managers who send us daily fund reconciliations.
• We’re focused on automating asset transfers and removing manual intervention. To remove manual processes and speed up transfers, we’ve increased the number of fund managers who use Equisoft (formerly Altus transfer gateway).

Closing products with zero balance - you told us you'd like us to fully close platform products with a zero balance, so your clients don’t receive unnecessary documents. We listened, and as a result now close your client's product if their balance has been zero, with no activity on the account for 12 months or more.

Support at the moments that matter

• Our customer-facing teams have received refresher empathy training focused on how to interact with customers at each stage of grief.  
• We’ve also enhanced our Bereavement, Power of Attorney and Divorce and pension sharing pages to make it easier for your clients to find what they need to know and which documents we need to see.

Fast and accurate proportionate switching - we've automated proportionate switch calculations - streamlining cash management and making it easier for you and your clients to respond quickly to market changes. In the Change existing investments process, simply follow these three simple steps:  

1. select monetary or percentage
2. enter the investment amount
3. select the Apply proportionately button to calculate the values.

It's fast, accurate and designed to save valuable time when your clients want to access their savings. 

ISA flexibility - We’ve introduced ISA flexibility, so your clients can make the most of their ISA allowance. Your clients can now withdraw and replace money in the same tax year without affecting their annual allowance – giving more control over their savings. 

GIA to GIA transfer process - you can now transfer investments between GIAs held by different clients.  

• Pension income reliability - It's vital your clients receive their pension income on time, so we made a commitment to improve income reliability. We've delivered on our promise with a new solution, which is already making a positive difference.

To avoid delays, even if sell transactions on your client’s ARC and/or One Retirement SIPP haven’t settled, we'll make the payment. This change means your clients can be reassured they'll receive their regular drawdown income when they expect it. Take a look at our frequently asked questions to find out more. 

• Improved expectation setting - to make sure you and your clients know exactly what to expect from us, we've introduced emails to keep you up to date with the progress of key money out requests, like withdrawals and transfers.
  

Excess reportable income report - our new Excess reportable income (ERI) report gives you the information your clients need to calculate ERI (the amount of profit their offshore reporting fund(s) held in the General Investment Account earned beyond the income paid to them as dividends or interest). This allows your clients to report the ERI on their tax return. You can access the latest quarterly report on our support pages:

• Aegon Retirement Choices
• Aegon Platform 

Product reporting tool - you can view and download the valuation and performance of your client’s portfolio for a selected date range. Features include:

• Customisable date range and product selection
• Graphical representation of the valuation and performance of your client's account.
• Client access

Access it today from your Client summary or read our overview.

Drip-feed drawdown report - we’ve listened to your feedback and created a new report to make it easier for you to see at a glance which clients have drip-feed drawdown, when payments are due and if a payment hasn’t been made.

We’ve split the report into three categories – Drip-feed drawdown mandate, Drip-feed drawdown payments and Ad-hoc tax-free cash payments, making the information easy to dissect. You can also view a history of your clients’ previous drip-feed drawdown payments based on your chosen date range.

You can access the report through Report Zone > Product wrappers opened and held > Drip-feed drawdown and Tax-free cash report.