Xafinity says it is making the move in response to a diminishing role for consultancy services on defined benefit pension schemes.
It will develop a proposition to be delivered through IFAs and will also offer the group Sipp directly to its own clients where it expects it to sit alongside existing core pension provision. The company will not however be offering group personal pensions or group stakeholder pension plans. The Hazell Carr Sipp is linked to the FundsDirect platform, but Xafinity is yet to reveal whether that platform provider or a different one will form part of its new group Sipp.
It is also looking at a master trust pension product as an alternative for defined benefit clients looking for an alternative solution to bare bones DC offerings.
Greg Clay, marketing and sales director at Xafinity says: “We have never had a pension product before but as the defined benefit market continues to decline we realise there will not be the consultancy or advisory fees around in the future. For this reason we realise we need to play in the Sipp space. We have the technological capability to deliver this sort of solution and this is a product that we need to be offering.”