The managing director of Standard Life’s workplace pensions business has revealed the company currently manages £57bn of assets, having won £2bn of net new business in the past year.
Gail Izat, who became managing director of the provider's workplace pensions business in 2020, told FT Adviser the company currently has 2.7mn individual workplace customers.
Net new money managed by the workplace pensions team was £4.5bn, roughly double the year before, and included £2bn of new mandates won from employers.
Something the team has been working to do is move all of the clients that are in the default investment option in to sustainable funds.
Izat said that while some other providers place new clients or new flows from existing default option clients into sustainable funds, she believes Standard Life is the only current provider to have switched the contributions of existing default clients.
She said the reason for this is that under current regulations, providers are obliged to consider “the financial risk associated with being invested in assets that aren’t sustainable".
At present, around 95 per cent of the company’s clients have chosen the default option.
Key to the £2bn of new assets over the past year was an agreement to manage assets for the Siemens UK pension fund.
Standard Life now forms part of the Phoenix Group but Izat said the change of ownership was initially a hindrance to Standard Life’s attempts to win new business.
This was because potential clients were sceptical about the prospects for the company under new ownership.
She said: “Phoenix wants to grow Standard Life and for it to win new mandates. Potential clients are now more comfortable with that and the key for a workplace pensions business is to achieve scale.”
While around 95 per cent of clients are in the default funds, Izat said she is focused on trying to “personalise the experience for clients".
She said: “One of the things we have realised is that when it comes to using an app, or otherwise accessing their account online, clients judge us by the standards of what their experience is like when buying other products.
"That is a high bar. The key is to make it as personalised as possible, and that includes working with clients who may be digitally excluded.”
Over the past year the Standard Life pensions app has been visited 20mn times, by one million different clients.
Izat said clients typically have three questions: “How much is in my pot? Is that a good amount? And how much income would that buy me. Around 60 per cent transact online when they visit the site.”
Part of the cultural changes Izat has implemented include the “two pizza rule”. This means that internal meetings must never contain more people than could be fed by two pizzas.
The firm has also partnered with the Department for Work and Pensions to recruit workers over the age of 50, who Izat said: “Can make a valuable contribution, but in many cases have lost a little bit of confidence.”
david.thorpe@ft.com
