Costs and Charges
Steven Blight - Company Nominee
Standard Life’s charges continue to be market competitive and throughout 2024 they have taken positive, proactive actions to review outliers and re-price where appropriate.
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Value for money indicator
Why we gave this score
The overall level of costs and charges from Standard Life continue to provide strong value for money, with the vast majority of you paying 0.75% or less per year.
There are a minority of customers whose charges are currently over 0.75% per year and have no additional, valuable benefits. Standard Life are planning on moving these customers into a more modern, lower charging product during 2025 and through 2026.
We rated Standard Life positively in 2023. During 2024 aggregate charge levels have continued to reduce so we have retained their high rating.
- Standard Life’s charges continue to be market competitive and offer good value for money.
- Throughout 2024 they have taken positive, proactive actions to re-price where appropriate resulting in lower charges for around 10,000 customers.
- For a minority of you who are paying above 0.75% per year without any additional benefits, we believe your value for money could be improved. Standard Life is planning action to do this in 2025 and through 2026.
- We regularly monitor transaction costs and are comfortable these remain reasonable.
- Most of you will pay no exit charges.
- For those of you who would pay an exit charge it is limited to 1% of your fund value.
- We monitor other charges you may pay for additional benefits and guarantees.
- We are happy that any other charges you pay are reasonable and offer value for money.
Some additional information
Challenges
In order to improve the value for money that customers receive, we set specific challenges to address areas that could be improved. Below is an update on the challenges we set Standard Life for 2024:
- Partially Met:Options investigated to offer customers paying over 0.75% per year in ongoing charges a more modern product with lower charges and wider benefits. This is a complex piece of work and we have been pleased with the plans and actions now underway. We are challenging Standard Life to move customers during 2025 and through 2026.
- Not met: Commission payments to advisers are being reviewed where their services are no longer being used. We are, however, disappointed with the pace so we are further challenging Standard Life to address these cases before the end 2025.
Challenges set for 2025:
- For customers at the start of 2024 paying more than 0.75% per year in annual charges (without additional valuable benefits), complete the move to a more modern product with wider proposition benefits during 2025 and through 2026.
- We further challenge Standard Life to replace explicit commission payments with adviser charging, where appropriate, before the end 2025.