AEGON Scottish Equitable property funds update
Background
In January this year, in common with a number of other providers, we had to defer certain withdrawals from our property funds. A number of properties have now been sold, and we’ll shortly be able to start to settle the deferred transactions.
What happens now?
- Market conditions and fund values have changed since customers made their request to switch. As a result, we’ll write to customers who requested a switch from our property funds before 1 August, giving them the opportunity to cancel their instructions and, if they want, change the choice of funds the property holdings are to be switched into. We’ll also enclose our standard quarterly factsheet.
- We won’t write to customers who have requested a surrender or transfer as we believe most will want payment as soon as possible.
- We started to process transfer or surrender requests on Monday 11 August. We’ll process them in the order of the date we received them (subject to all necessary documentation being completed and received at our head office). We aim to complete this by the end of September.
- We’ll process all switches at the relevant fund prices ruling on Monday 8 September. We aim to finish processing all switch instructions we received at our head office before 1 August by the end of September.
- You can see a copy of the switch letter by clicking the link below. As you can see, if we don’t receive a response by close of business on Thursday 4 September, we’ll automatically process the original instruction to avoid further delay.
So that we can process deferred requests in the order we received them, we’ll continue to defer any new withdrawal requests for the time being, in line with policy conditions.
Switch requests that we received at our head office after Thursday 31 July and before close of business on Monday 29 September will be processed at fund prices applying on Wednesday 1 October. We’ll start to process transfer and surrender requests from Wednesday 1 October.
Based on the current level of transactions, we anticipate lifting the deferment restrictions when we’ve processed all deferred requests received before 1 August. This means that, while we might not immediately process switch requests we receive at our head office on or after Tuesday 30 September, we’ll process each at the price date pertinent to our normal switch procedures.
Fund pricing basis
The property funds are currently priced on a cancellation basis because they have experienced more sellers than buyers. A fund would only move back to a creation-pricing basis when there was a sustained trend of purchases exceeding sales.
You can get a detailed factsheet that should answer any questions you have about the funds from your usual AEGON Scottish Equitable contact. Alternatively, please call our dedicated property number: 08456 100 003.
