Financial services firm Legal & General (L&G) has acquired pension pot tracing and consolidation specialists MyFutureNow for an undisclosed fee.
The deal will see L&G offer an in-house pension dashboard service to clients as well as IFAs.
It comes months after a law was passed by the UK government to force all providers to make pension information available.
In the terms of the acquisition, Legal & General Retail Retirement (LGRR) purchased 100% of Finovation, which is trading as MyFutureNow.
Tracing element
MyFutureNow provides a service that allows the customer to trace their lost or forgotten pension pots.
Using basic personal data and employment details, MyFutureNow uses its pension database and provider knowledge to trace pension pots and provide updated details to the customer.
It can be used either as a tracing service or way of creating a single dashboard view of an individual’s pension savings portfolio.
Getting ahead of plans
Chris Knight, chief executive of LGRR, said: “At Legal & General, we fully support the government’s pension dashboard initiative – but the reality is that it may be years before full coverage is realised.
“Wherever they are in their retirement journey, from beginning to save for retirement to planning retirement income solutions, customers need the tools and guidance to make informed decisions about the most suitable options for their personal circumstances, lifestyle and retirement goals.
“In the retail retirement division, we are committed to helping people make better informed decisions when it comes to retirement planning.
“Once MyFutureNow is integrated, it will remove the headache of tracking down old pension plans from past employers, enabling consumers to make retirement decisions using all their available sources of retirement income”.
Service
The UK company will open the dashboard to existing and potential customers across its retail retirement and defined contribution pensions business.
The service will be mainly offered to L&G customers of retirement age, who are tracing their various pension pots before making a decision about their retirement income, whether through an annuity, drawdown, a combination of both, or other means.
Additionally, customers of working age, who want to find and possibly consolidate their various pension pots into a single retirement savings solution, will also have access.
Complex decisions
“Making the right financial decisions at the point of retirement is often complicated – and it’s our mission to ensure that we do everything possible to make life simpler for our customers.” said Emma Byron, managing director of LGRR.
“The onus is now very much on the individual to build their own retirement financial strategy – and while that’s exciting and empowering, it can also be really daunting.
“Everybody’s retirement is different, but what all consumers at this point in life have in common is the need to make quite complex decisions.
“They have to think about their appetite for risk, their health prospects, their anticipated life expectancy and their capacity for long-term financial decision making. Advice, tools and guidance are crucial.
“We believe the addition of MyFutureNow’s platform will help us in our mission to support consumers at this critical stage in life.”
