Table 1 shows the assets under management for the majority of survey respondents. Several do not feature here as they declined to provide any details about their assets; specifically AJ Bell – whose omission was down to a “management decision”, although last year reported £677m under management – DA Phillips & Co and Nigel Sloam & Co.
The absence of large providers alongside the inclusion of new participants means comparing totals with last year is difficult. This year’s total funds under management of £16bn shows an increase of 9.8 per cent on last year’s £14.6bn. But the average funds under management per provider has dropped from £685m to £485m. However, these figures exclude Standard Life and L&G and include 14 more providers than last year, so cannot be compared like-for-like.
Another way to gauge the fluctuation of SSAS figures is to look at providers that submitted data for funds under management this year and last. Of the 17 providers this applies to, there was a 5.8 per cent increase. Whichever way it is looked at, SSASs appear to be on the up.
The largest growth in business comes from Rowanmoor, notching up an extra £414.7m in business than reported last year. The firm also takes the title of largest firm by funds under management, holding £2.7bn.
Xafinity, a smaller but still sizeable player in the market, had the next biggest growth compared with last year, adding £290.6m of SSAS business to its books – a hefty proportion of its £881.1m funds under management. This was largely due to Xafinity’s acquisition of Alliance Trust’s SSAS book, which added more than 340 clients onto its books.
According to Jeff Steedman, Sipp and SSAS business development manager at Xafinity, this is a trend the firm will continue. “We will be trying to buy as many SSAS and Sipp competitors and providers as we possibly can,” he says.
While not wishing to name any takeovers in the pipeline, Mr Steedman singled out life companies as firms likely to be exiting the SSAS market in coming years. “In my view, it is not really an insurance company-type product anymore,” he says. “It is not core to their business. I can’t think of any life companies actively marketing it.” With Standard Life exiting the market and other life offices reporting negligible growth or even decline, it seems his predictions may well be correct.
One life company still commanding a rather large market share is Friends Life. With £1.3bn in its 4,407 SSASs, it continues to hold a significant proportion of all schemes. But financially, it saw one of the largest losses of business at £51m.
