SIPP sales soar to £7.1bn in just three years

Today the Standard Life Self Invested Personal Pension (SIPP) celebrates 3 years of excellence since its launch on 6th December 2004. The award winning SIPP has attracted 41,700 customers with £7.1bn funds under management in its first three years.

Standard Life has emerged as a winner during a period of unprecedented growth in the SIPP market. The market has seen year-on-year growth of 83.5% in 2005, 116.7% in 2006 and 58.1% to the end of the 3rd quarter in 2007. A key driver of this growth has been customer aggregation of different pension arrangements into a SIPP, allowing the customer and their adviser to set and review the asset allocation strategy to achieve the customer’s goals from one pension contract.

Trevor Matthews, Chief Executive, UK Financial Services, Standard Life said: “Our SIPP has been a spectacular success since launch, enjoying first mover advantage as well as providing our customers and advisers with first class service.”

The A-Day ‘effect’ has propelled SIPP into a new league as people planning for retirement are using it to aggregate existing pensions into one plan. Looking ahead, the market opportunities for SIPP are huge. A potential target market could be anywhere between 3 million to 7 million customers, and Standard Life anticipates the number of people who will have a SIPP to increase threefold to 500,000 worth £100 billion by 2011.

Matthews concludes: “With exciting developments in the pipeline, 2008 will be a year of evolution for our SIPP and we are well positioned to deliver our organic growth strategy using capital efficient innovative products.”