F&C's Lifestyle range goes live with Zurich

F&C's innovative range of four risk-rated ‘Lifestyle' multi-manager funds have been added to the Zurich product platform and are now available through the Zurich retail Pension, Sterling Bond and Sterling Investment Account and ISA products.

The four unfettered funds of funds - Lifestyle Defensive, Lifestyle Cautious, Lifestyle Balanced and Lifestyle Growth - are designed to match the core asset allocation models generated by Dynamic Planner, a popular independent risk profiling tool. Once advisers allocate an appropriate risk profile to their client, the relevant F&C Lifestyle fund is selected with the portfolio regularly rebased to ensure that the underlying asset allocation remains suitable for the needs and profile of the investor. F&C believes this provides a practical response to addressing some of the challenges raised by the FSA's Treating Customers Fairly initiative.

Barry Neilson, Director of Business Development at F&C: said: "We are delighted that the F&C Lifestyle range is now accessible through the Zurich and Sterling product platform. Zurich has an extensive and widely used product range in the UK and it is therefore an important milestone for the Lifestyle funds to establish a presence on the platform."

Ron Pritchard, Chief Executive Officer, The Clarkson Hill Group PLC, added: "As a strategic partner of the F&C Lifestyle fund range we are pleased to see that the funds have been added to the Zurich platform. This is a very positive development. It is important that advisers have the flexibility to access investment funds from a range of life offices and distribution platforms."