AJ Bell today launches the Retirement Investment Account (RIA), a new low-cost pension with a streamlined investment proposition. It has been designed to hit the pricing and investment options sweet spot for advised clients with pensions of around £250,000 or less.
The RIA sits alongside AJ Bell’s existing Self Invested Personal Pension (SIPP) on the AJ Bell Investcentre platform for financial advisers and has a different pricing structure and investment range, enabling advisers to more effectively match the AJ Bell RIA and SIPP to different client segments.
How much does it cost?
The RIA will have a simple, all-in cost of 0.25% per annum for assets up to £500,000 and 0.20% per annum on assets over £500,000. There are no other fees for setup, administration, dealing or drawdown.
This makes it one of the simplest and most competitively priced pensions in the market, particularly for fund sizes of around £250,000 or less. See lang cat heat maps in link below for detailed pricing comparisons.
What does it include?
The RIA includes all the major areas of functionality of the AJ Bell Investcentre platform, such as tools to help advisers with investment analysis, bulk dealing, regular investments, cash management and capital gains reporting.
The investment options include full access to AJ Bell’s Funds & Shares Service alongside its Managed Portfolio Service, Retirement Portfolio Service and its multi-asset funds. In total this provides access to more than 4,000 external funds as well as a full range of Investment Trusts, ETFs, shares and bonds.
What doesn’t it include?
It does not provide access to AJ Bell’s panel of investment partners and ‘off-panel’ investments, including commercial property. This enables AJ Bell to keep the charging structure simple and low cost for the new RIA.
Lang cat review
AJ Bell asked the lang cat to produce an impartial review of the RIA’s features and compare its pricing to similar offerings in the market. A copy of the report can be found here - https://www.investcentre.co.uk/sites/default/files/RIA_langcat_review.pdf
Andy Bell, chief executive of AJ Bell, comments:
“The new Retirement Investment Account has been designed to meet demand from advisers for a low-cost platform pension with an all-in pricing structure and comprehensive investment range to suit a particular segment of clients.
“Mifid and PROD regulations have made it clearer than ever to advisers that they need to be recommending products that are demonstrably suitable for client needs. Launching the RIA alongside our existing SIPP provides advisers with real strength in depth as they seek to meet that challenge. The RIA provides a combination of simple, low-cost charges, whilst not losing any of the functionality of the platform and still offering a very wide range of investment options.
“The RIA’s all-in pricing structure is very competitive compared to other similar products and we believe it could be ideal for advisers looking to use our Funds & Shares Service, Managed Portfolio Service or multi-asset funds as a simple, packaged solution for clients with pension portfolios of £250,000 or less.”