Royal London

Royal London is a mutual life, pensions and investment company in the UK. It was founded in 1886, becoming a mutual life assurance society in 1908. The firm’s investment arm is Royal London Asset Management. Royal London owns the Ascentric wrap platform, which chief executive Phil Loney emphasised as a core part of the business in March 2017.

In the same month, Royal London recorded a 16 per cent increase in operating profit to £282m for 2016 as new life and pensions business grew by 28 per cent. However, the results statement showed how wrap platform Ascentric’s replatforming project had impacted Royal London’s balance sheet. The statement said Royal London took a £44m hit on “uncovered business” on its platform due to “significant” costs relating to the development of Ascentric’s new back office software.

Royal London’s independent governance committee asked the provider in April 2017 to review exit charges on some of its legacy products because they were no longer justified by commission payments to advisers.

In its annual report on value for money at the provider, the IGC said that while exit charges were necessary to offset “significant up-front costs”, including IFA commission payments, on pensions decades ago, the provider should be able to remove leaving penalties on more modern contracts since commissions have been banned.

Drawdown and individual pension sales at Royal London rose by more than 60 per cent in the first half of 2017. Royal London chief executive Phil Loney argued that mandatory advice on drawdown could be a “potential solution” to problems in the market.

In November 2017, it was announced Royal London Asset Management was changing the name of the £794m UK Growth fund and launching an income share class. From 15 January 2018, the UK Growth fund has been called the Royal London UK Dividend Growth fund. Income units and quarterly distributions were to be introduced from 31 July 2018.