Aegon, Aviva, Friends Life, Royal London and Standard Life have all been awarded gold standard status as workplace pension providers in F&TRC’s ratings.
The ratings are designed to assist advisers and employers in their decision-making process, by ranking providers’ strengths in different areas of their propositions.
Now: Pensions and The People’s Pension achieved silver ratings in the workplace pensions category, while Legal & General, Nest, Scottish Widows and Zurich did not participate in the ratings.
In the ratings’ auto-enrolment provider category, Aegon, Aviva, Johnson Fleming, Royal London and Standard Life all achieved gold, with Friends Life, The People’s Pension and True Potential earning silver and Nest and Now: Pensions gaining a bronze rating. Legal & General, Scottish Widows and Zurich were not rated in this category.
FTRC’s workplace pensions ratings and data looks at a provider’s entire pension offering, including the auto-enrolment process and functionality. The auto-enrolment ratings solely focus on the quality and functionality of a provider’s offing in that space alone.
The detailed rankings cover nine key underlying sub-categories to recognise individual areas of excellence. The categories analysed and weighted in the overall results reflect the features selected and prioritised most often based on thousands of online comparisons conducted by corporate advisers using F&TRC’s Quality Analyser software.
F&TRC director Ian McKenna says: “Selecting the right workplace pension scheme is a decision which can impact an employee’s financial wellbeing for decades. Different pension providers have different strengths, some offer budget type services, with others offering more comprehensive solutions. Our ratings are designed to make it easier for employers and advisers to recognise the difference between various propositions.
“Whilst ideally advisers would conduct a full analysis report using our software, which is free to all adviser members of the PFS, for employers and advisers looking to make a quick recommendation the ratings provide an independent measure they can use to inform decisions”
JLT Employee Benefits director Mark Pemberthy says: “We have worked closely with F&TRC for several years. Their extensive research plays a valuable part in our due diligence process and provides a flexible basis for comparing features and functionality between pension providers.”
