Employee benefits adviser Sedgwick Noble Lowndes has launched an investment service for employer-sponsored pension schemes. The Flexifund enables money purchase schemes to invest in a range of funds with specialist investment managers and allows these managers to be switched without changing administrators.
Sedgwick’s investment director Paul Haines said that many smaller pension schemes with between #1m-#15m worth of funds under investment could not afford the range of funds larger schemes use. He added: ‘Many small schemes can’t justify full-time managers, and paying #10,000 for a beauty parade of funds makes no sense either. Our scheme gives them the ability to change the balance of investments in tune with the profile of scheme members.’
The separation of investment managers and providers is an unusual feature for group personal pension schemes, most of which have a single fund manager through their provider. ‘Changing the fund manager usually involves the disruption of changing providers – this is costly and not necessary with our scheme.’