Scottish Life launches Self Invested Personal Pension capability

Scottish Life, the pensions specialist arm of the Royal London Group, is launching a Self Invested Personal Pension (SIPP) product in December.

The new SIPP facilities are available from “Pension Portfolio”, the recently rebranded extension of Scottish Life’s existing successful individual personal pension product.

The new functionality in Pension Portfolio includes:

a core investment approach using Scottish Life’s innovative “Managed Strategies”, designed to maximise real returns, while using diversification to reduce risk
access to over 1,200 funds through fund supermarket FundsDirect
an execution-only share dealing service through Selftrade
a panel of discretionary fund managers, including Cazenove Capital Management, Rathbone Investment Management and Tilney Investment Management
access to other permitted investments, such as commercial property.
contracted-out benefits and self investment available in the same plan.

Barry Shields, Head of Individual Business at Scottish Life, commented: “The ability to access a flexible range of investment options, either immediately or in the future, is becoming increasingly important for customers in the advised market. We have developed additional self investment functionality to meet this growing need.

“As immediate use of the new investment options will not be appropriate for all customers, we have designed the product so that investors only have to pay for the extra self investment functionality if and when it is used.”

Existing customers in Scottish Life’s “Pension Portfolio” can automatically access the new SIPP capability, if appropriate. Charges for the core proposition remain unchanged and charges for the new functionality will only be applied if and when it is used.

Barry Shields added: “As well as evolving a leading-edge individual pension product by adding significant additional investment flexibility, we have put a lot of focus on the importance of having excellent online and automated servicing capabilities.

“We believe ongoing investment governance is fundamental, for example regular rebalancing of asset portfolios. The Pension Portfolio proposition makes this available to every investor.

“Scottish Life has developed the core online systems and we have selected Capita SIP Services to provide the specialist administration support given their wealth of experience.

“We are confident that the overall package, of product and related services, will make a significant impact in the marketplace.”