A choice of tax efficient products
We recognise the importance of managing your money in the most tax efficient manner, so we give you access to four key financial products. Regardless of how many of these products you hold in your own name, you will only pay one platform charge based on the total amount you have invested on the platform.
- Individual Savings Account (ISA)
- Personal Pension
- Onshore Bond
- Direct funds (Unit trusts and OEICs)
A starting point for assessing your attitude to risk
We recognise that investors have different attitudes when it comes to the amount of risk that they’re prepared to take when investing money with us. We give financial advisers access to a risk profiling tool which can be used as a starting point for assessing your attitude to risk, and then tools to match it to the most appropriate spread of investments.
A wide and consistent choice of funds
It’s important that you have plenty of funds to choose from, which is why there are over 1,200 funds available from more than 90 fund managers on our platform. And to make
investment management as easy as possible for you and your financial adviser, the same fund range is broadly available irrespective of the products that you invest in. This means you can build a single fund portfolio that can apply to each of the products available on our platform.
Tools to help select the right funds
With so many funds to choose from your adviser will need to find a way to recommend a combination of funds that best meet your needs. Our market leading portfolio planning tools come as standard on the platform and are designed to help your adviser recommend the most suitable portfolio of funds for you.
A great way to review and manage your investments
Once your investment portfolio is up and running it’s important that your adviser is able to monitor the performance and the risk level of your investments. Our portfolio planning tools allow your adviser to give your investments a vital and regular health check to give you the best chance of hitting your future goals.
A simple approach to charging
We believe Skandia has one of the most straightforward charging structure in the market because of its simplicity and consistency. We make only an annual charge, called the Skandia Platform Charge, based on a percentage of the total value of the investments you hold on the Skandia Investment Solutions platform. Then you will generally only pay the cost of the funds that you’ve invested in (total annual cost) and the cost for the advice you receive from your financial adviser.
You can find out more about the cost of investing through Skandia in our guide ‘Making the Cost of Investment Clear’.
No fund manager initial charges
If you were to buy a fund directly from a fund manager you would probably need to pay a fund manager initial charge, which could be up to 5% of your initial investment. Thanks to Skandia’s scale and buying power we’ve been able to eradicate virtually all fund manager initial charges from our platform and we pass this entire benefit back to you in the form of reduced up-front costs.
No platform switching charge
Because we believe you should be regularly reviewing and managing your investments we want to ensure you can do this in the most cost effective way. When you switch money from one fund to another we don’t make a platform switch charge. If you were to deal direct with fund managers switching could be a costly and time consuming process. You would need to cash in your investment, wait for a cheque to arrive, pay the cheque into your bank account, fill out a new application form and, on top of that, you’d also probably need to pay a fund manager initial charge on your new investment. Skandia’s platform makes moving money from one fund to another fund a hassle free and cost effective process.
Online access to your portfolio
We think it should be easy to see how much your investments are worth, which is why you have online access to this information with Skandia. Until a few years ago your adviser would have needed to phone up or write to each individual fund manager and/or product provider to pull together a valuation. Now you can view all your platform investments online whenever you want. There may be occasions when you need to take direct control of your investments. For this reason we make online switching available to any client who signs up to have online access to their Skandia investments.
Tools which help your financial adviser make more informed decisions
Skandia develops additional tools to help your financial adviser give you better advice. Our Managed Fund Analyser was launched in 2010 and is designed to help your adviser determine whether or not any managed fund that you might be invested in is the right type of investment for you. We also provide tools to help your adviser build your retirement funds and then plan your income, calculate your life assurance needs and understand the most tax-efficient way for you to either invest or withdraw your money.