Insurance provider Zurich is gearing up for the launch of its long-awaited retail platform aimed at the UK's adviser market despite a delay due to 'fine tuning' and ongoing final testing.
Zurich's head of platform distribution, Jaki Platt, said the firm's FNZ-built retail platform, which will sit at the heart of the adviser market, is now on track to be up and running by the end of the year.
Zurich's intermediary platform will launch with a number of Isas, general investment accounts, and Sipp products as well as offshore and onshore bonds. The product range will then be broadened to include protection plans such as the firm's International Triple Account Offshore series and the Equity Linked Growth Account series.
Zurich's platform will also provide access to around 1,200 funds including exchange-traded funds from over 70 fund and discretionary fund managers, and will have an unbundled charging structure and tiered pricing aimed at advisers who do not just serve high-net-worth clients.
In addition, Zurich is marketing a new capital-protected structure for UK investors more than six months after it sold the last tranche of its Zelga deposit accounts series. The Zurich Equity Linked Growth Account 8 (Zelga 8) will run for five years and is linked to the performance of an underlying basket comprising 15 of the largest stocks in the FTSE100 index. This podium structure will lock in a coupon of up to 9% every year for each share that is above its strike level at any annual observation date. The coupon is calculated as the average performance of all the stocks in the basket, which is locked in and paid upon maturity.
Zelga 8 will be open until 3 February. Minimum investment is £20,000.
This product will be available shortly in Recent Additions (UK).