Welcome to December's Latest News

As 2018 draws to a close, we bring you our final edition of Latest News for this year.

To recap on 2018, we've kept you up-to-date with changes impacting your business such as GDPR, IDD, MiFID II and Brexit. As we turn the corner into next year we expect our coverage on this to continue - especially with Brexit. But it's not all change driven by regulation and government. We’ve also shared information to help you with tax-year end, details on improvements we’ve made to our processes and online services. We also launched our new online protection service for Personal Protection and Whole of Life.

But looking at this final edition of 2018, we share with you our questions and answers we've pulled together on Brexit. You can also take a look at our consolidation toolkit where you'll find useful information to help you consolidate your clients' investments on Aegon Retirement Choices (ARC). We keep you informed on what we’re doing to increase engagement in the workplace and a customer shares how critical illness protection helped remove a financial burden after her cancer diagnosis.

We finish with an article on the Pensions Dashboard being given the green light and a cracker of an award our ARC contact centre won.

From all of us here, we wish you a Merry Christmas and prosperous New Year. We'll be back in 2019 to bring you more news.

Brexit: your questions answered

The UK and EU are currently negotiating the terms of their future relationship.

We like to keep you informed of political developments, including Brexit, which may have an impact on our business and particularly you and your clients.

We've prepared a number of questions and answers that we hope you find useful. You can even share these with your clients.

Read our Brexit questions and answers.

Generate business from your clients’ off-platform assets

Our consolidation toolkit can help you easily approach and discuss with your clients the benefits of bringing their assets onto ARC.

Our research conducted with our UK customer panel in November 2018, tells us that 56% of people have considered consolidating their assets.

For those with multiple pensions, they believe the benefits to be:

• having the ability to manage their assets in one place - 82%;
• the potential to lower their overall charges - 62%, and
• the ability to easily track all their funds' investment performance - 50%.

Take a look at our consolidation toolkit.

Helping increase engagement in the workplace

We’re creating a fresh approach to financial engagement in the workplace.

Research that we recently carried out with the CBI, has highlighted the importance of member engagement and its role in planning and retention. It also highlighted the gap that exists for employers being able to provide engaging material for the workplace.

We’re trialling a number of ideas to help us continually improve our communications for you, your clients and their pension schemes.

Find out more.

Peace of mind when breast cancer strikes

The value of protection cover can't be underestimated. Share our story on Carole with your clients to show the value it can bring.

Carole’s critical illness policy provided her with ‘peace of mind’ after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. It helped her to cope financially and cover her mortgage, while in treatment - without having to work.

Pensions Dashboard given green light

The Department for Work and Pensions recently launched a consultation seeking views on the findings of a government study on how the pensions industry can create online pensions dashboards. The consultation closes on 28 January 2019.

Pensions dashboards will be secure online services that will let people access their information from multiple pensions, including the State Pension, in a clear and simple form.

It's envisaged the first Pensions Dashboard will be established in 2019, with multiple dashboards to be introduced in the following years subject to the necessary consumer protection being in place.

Read more on the proposal on the government's website.

ECCCSA award winner for the second year.

We're delighted our ARC contact centre team won silver award for Best Cross-Functional Customer Experience Initiative at the recent European Contact Centre & Customer Service Awards (ECCCSA).

This category acknowledges that the most successful contact centre teams work closely with other parts of the organisation in order to 'do the right thing'. This award recognises our hard work in bringing together our Distribution, Marketing, Proposition and Customer Services team to improve our processes for you and your clients.

Our 2018 programme has been a great success, it saw our net promoter score increase, and we'll be continuing this work into 2019.

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

Aegon Retirement Choices - produce a SIPP projection illustration.

Go to the SIPP wrapper, select 'Specialised quotes' and you'll get an illustration for your client's preferred retirement age.

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.