Standard Life secures super-clean share classes from leading fund groups

Standard Life has announced that it has, subject to the conclusion of contractuals, received confirmation of ‘super-clean' preferential fund terms from 15 major fund groups.

These super clean funds offer advisers' clients access to preferential fund terms via Standard Life's platforms without any rebate mechanism or associated tax liability. On average, the terms will offer around a 9 basis points discount on the current ‘clean' terms.
 
Standard Life is continuing negotiations with other fund groups to secure the best possible terms for advisers' clients on its platforms.
 
All super-clean terms will be published in September and Standard Life is working with each group individually to get the new super clean funds on the platform as soon as possible.
 
David Tiller, Standard Life Head of Adviser Platforms, commented: "In April, we announced our intent to move to a rebate-free platform. We are already well advanced in our rolling programme to introduce clean share classes to our Wrap platform and today's announcement of the progress in our super-clean negotiations is another major milestone in this journey.
 
"Fund groups talk about the ease of dealing with Standard Life's platform, citing our ability to aggregate trades, the quality of our management information and the low risk of remediation work as a result of our strong governance.  By working effectively together we generate savings to pass on to advisers' clients."
 
Graham Dow, Standard Life Head of Investment Group Relationships, added: "The top fund groups recognise the value of engaging with Standard Life and the advisers we work with. We have had a number of detailed discussions and shared our Leading Platform Programme roadmap of platform developments. The approach of the fund groups to these discussions has been constructive and they have shown they understand the need to support PS13/1 with a focus on transparency and total cost to customer."