For intermediaries only

Welcome to November's Latest News

Building on last month’s launch of our Advice Makes Sense hub, you can see our Chief Distribution Officer, Ronnie Taylor discussing the changing face of advice with CISI. We’ve also launched our new guide to business protection which has lots of information on helping you identify new clients and develop your protection business.

We also share some important pension tax reminders with details of action that your or your clients may have to take.

Finally, have a look at our new lifestyle letters we're introducing for off-platform pensions and how we're asking a selection of advisers their opinion on us.

There won't be a December issue of Latest News so we'll be back in 2020. Thanks for your support throughout this year and have a Merry Christmas.

Pension tax reminders

Here are a couple of important tax reminders. You may need to take action with your clients.

Annual allowance charge

It's worth checking if your clients have got an annual allowance charge to pay. Remember they may not have received a pensions savings statement from their pension provider – these are only issued under certain circumstances.

Additional pensions tax relief

For your clients who make contributions to personal pensions, other than through salary sacrifice, and pay income tax on their earnings of more than the basic rate remember they need to claim additional tax relief due.

Read more about these pension tax reminders

The changing face of advice

Visit our Advice Makes Sense hub to watch Ronnie Taylor, Chief Distribution Officer, in conversation with the CISI's Chris Morris, Deputy Head of Financial Planning. They talk about the fundamental issues that are likely to impact on the way financial advice is given in the future and how advisers can adapt to the changes. If you watch this short video you can claim 10 minutes unstructured CPD time.

You'll also find lots of other useful information on the hub such as our latest articles and research, as well as links to our other technical hubs to further develop your knowledge and support your conversations with clients.

Welcome to our new guide to business protection

Our new guide is designed to help you develop opportunities, as well as learn more about business protection and how to advise on it.

Whether you're new to the business protection market or not, our guide has something for everyone. It includes:

• guidance on setting up business protection arrangements;
• the tax and trust implications surrounding the different arrangements available;
• how to identify potential clients;
• how to develop professional connections;
• employee benefits for small and medium sized companies, and
• possible business protection solutions.

Read our guide which you can download from our business protection toolkit.

Improved lifestyle fund letters now available on off-platform pensions

You may remember we told you back in April about the improvements we made to the letters we send to Aegon Retirement Choices and One Retirement clients who are invested in lifestyle funds as they approach their retirement - well the good news is, we'll be starting to send these to clients with off-platform pension products.

The letters are designed to help investors work out if their fund still matches their retirement plans and also prompts them to review their retirement date.

Take a look at a sample letter.

Your opinion matters

We started last month reaching out to a selection of advisers inviting them to share their views on us.

We're using this feedback as one of main methods of making sure we identify and tackle improvement areas that matter to you.

If you see an invite coming into your inbox from our Chief Distribution Officer, Ronnie Taylor, please take 5 to 10 minutes to share your views.

Fund changes and news

Find out about changes to our insured funds, including governance news, fund closures and fund changes.

Platform tip of the month

ARC - ongoing adviser charge

Add, amend or delete with no paperwork.

When viewing the wrapper, select Ongoing Adviser Charge from the Transaction Menu and do it all from there.

Pensions Technical Zone

Visit our home for all our technical material relating to pensions. You'll find articles covering the latest pensions' issues and links to our comprehensive range of technical FAQs.

In the news