Aegon completes first tranche of Cofunds customer transfers as 79,000 are moved

Aegon UK has completed the first stage of moving Cofunds customers onto its new, combined platform just over a year after the Edinburgh-based insurance and life company completed its acquisition.

Aegon, which employs 2,000 staff at its Edinburgh Park headquarters, became the biggest platform provider in the UK after it bought Cofunds from L&G in August 2016 for £140 million.

Aegon said its newly intergrated platform “provides a slicker and more modern service for customers with less paper and better online access enabled for mobile and tablet devices”.

The creation of the new platform follows October’s announcment that Aegon would drop the Cofunds brand and transfer 79,000 investors over Christmas.

That process has now seen non-advised investor portfolio service customers, mostly from building societies, moved over and Cofunds’ advised clients are expected to move to the new platform in May.

On announcing the timeframes in November, Aegon said advisers did not want their clients transferred in the run up to tax year end and also wanted time to allow Mifid II rules to bed in.

Aegon said it has started informing advisers about what they can expect from the new platform and how the migration of clients will be managed.

Aegon chief distribution and marketing officer Mark Till, said: “We’ve completed the first big milestone as we seek to combine the best of the Aegon and Cofunds services. The successful upgrade of 79,000 IPS customers to a more modern service based on Aegon’s platform technology gives us a great deal of confidence in our approach.”

Now its first phase of integration is complete, Aegon said it plans to “soft launch” the new retail platform with a small number of Cofunds firms for new business only in January.

Mr Till says the upgrade work is still on budget and on track.