With immediate effect, customers who wish to invest in an International Portfolio Bond from Legal & General International (Ireland) Ltd can now hold and manage their investments on the Skandia Investment Solutions platform.
Clients can use existing qualifying platform holdings to set up an International Portfolio Bond.
The SIPP specialist arm of the Legal & General Group, Suffolk Life, has also confirmed that SmartSIPP now offers access to the Skandia Platform.
Research from Platforum indicates advisers like the simplicity of Skandia's platform proposition but also value being able to purchase additional assets off platform direct via Suffolk Life where required.
The PLATFORUM places Skandia as the UK's largest platform by assets under administration with over £40 billion in AUA (as at June 30th 2011).
Nick Dixon, Skandia UK's marketing director said:
"Using a platform to manage a portfolio of funds within an offshore bond or SIPP provides advisers and customers with many benefits.
"There are no initial charges on any of the funds on our platform, there are risk profiling and asset allocation tools that can help match portfolios to customer needs and the portfolio can be managed and updated easily and cost efficiently.
"We are very pleased to have teamed up with two Legal & General businesses and expect the Skandia platform to be a popular option within their customers."
Danny Wynn, Director, Platforms and Policy Legal & General commented:
"Many advisers now place increasing importance on choice of platform in their product selection process. Similarly as we approach RDR we expect that customers will increasingly want to access financial services and products via their platform of choice.
"This is creating new opportunities for platform providers to both extend the services they offer to their existing clients and develop new and mutually valuable client relationships. We are delighted to be working with Skandia to widen investment choice for our customers."
