The providers who do follow these standards commit to maintaining them for the life of the product. The standards have been beneficial in adding transparency to savings products in the wake of past fraudulent pension sales. The collective fund industry in the United Kingdom is the sixth largest retail collective fund industry in the world. Asset growth has been strong over the past few years. Account growth has been strong as well.
Institutions make up a large percentage of collective fund sales.
The benefit of pooled pension funds is to reduce the cost to the pension sponsor over the cost of a segregated mandate. Unit-linked insurance contracts represent investment in collective vehicles, like retail unit trusts or insurance company pooled portfolios, which include a component of an insurance product. Investment trusts are most frequently sold through Direct or Intermediary Sales channels, which are primarily brokers. The United Kingdom is a well-established leader in the collective fund industry and continues to develop to maintain its status. The recent introduction of fund supermarkets has added more choice for the individual investor and created more competition for the financial groups.