Prudential exclusive investment bond provider to Santander UK

Prudential and Santander UK have entered into an exclusive agreement for Santander to distribute Prudential's market-leading investment bonds in the UK for an initial five-year period from 2011.

Under the agreement to offer investment bonds from Prudential, Santander has access to Prudential's Flexible Investment Plan range of funds including the popular PruFund range of guaranteed investment funds as well as scope to include Santander Asset Management (SAM) funds within the bond.   Prudential's Flexible Investment Plan will be available to Santander's 25 million UK customers in 1,300 high street branches throughout the country from 2011. 

With close to £3 billion in funds under management since its launch in 2004, PruFund continues to prove popular with investors who have a more cautious attitude to risk and is expected to have particular appeal to Santander's customer base.

This agreement gives Prudential a new distribution channel alongside its existing IFA distribution, with PruFund Cautious in particular complementing Santander's existing advised product range.

Barry O'Dwyer, Managing Director of Retail Life & Pensions at Prudential UK & Europe, said: "Winning this deal demonstrates the appetite and ambition that Prudential has for growing our UK business in areas where we have a strong competitive advantage.  The agreement gives Santander access to our market-leading investment bonds and, in particular, the PruFund range.  We are investing to build multi-channel distribution while demonstrating our commitment to develop market-leading products that help people as they save for the long-term."

Reza Attar-Zadeh, Director of Savings and Investments at Santander said: "Santander's strategy is to offer value for money products across all areas in which it does business. The Prudential deal complements this strategy as it allows our customers access to yet another fantastic product."

Santander will continue to sell its own investment products but will not sell any other third party's investment bonds through its branch network for at least the next five years.

To support the deal, Prudential will invest in establishing a new account management team to support Santander's 1,000 high street branch based advisers who will have access to the Prudential investment bond fund range.

Commenting on the arrangement, Andy Curran, Distribution Director at Prudential said: "This is an important collaboration between two well-respected brands that significantly broadens our distribution capability and builds on our IFA franchise where we continue to see strong year-on-year business growth."