17 March 2008

 

ALLIANCE TRUST SAVINGS WELCOMES CLOSE INVESTORS ON TO ‘BEST OF BREED’ INVESTMENT PLATFORM

 

Financial services company Alliance Trust Savings today announced that the administration of over 4,200 Close Investments Limited (Close) ISAs, PEPs and share plan wrappers has been successfully transferred to its open architecture investment platform. 

 

Close investors will now benefit from the greater versatility of Alliance Trust’s industry-leading investment service that allows them to choose from more than 3,000 investment choices as well as to trade online, by telephone or post.  They will also have the opportunity to add to their investments by consolidating all their ISAs and legacy PEPs, as well as SIPPs and non tax-advantaged accounts on one platform with no annual plan charges, and to benefit from a wide range of customer-friendly portfolio management tools and features.  

 

Last month, Alliance Trust Savings announced the transfer of almost 4,500 customer accounts from Allianz Global Investors to its investment platform, following similar moves last year by several investment trust managers including Martin Currie and Investec. 

 

Kelly O’Donnell, Managing Director – Distribution at Alliance Trust Savings, said, “This latest transfer provides further evidence that the trend towards consolidation of investment administration is gathering pace.  Rather than investment houses bearing the significant additional cost of providing and upgrading their own non-core administration services, we will see further migration of customer accounts to best of breed platforms like our own.” 

 

“We have built our open architecture investment services platform with the guiding principle of putting the  customers’ interests at the centre of everything that we do.  This allows us to evolve and expand our range of products, features and investment choices relatively cheaply and, therefore, keep costs down for customers.  This in turn enables us to attract new customers quickly, both directly and through further large scale transfers.”  

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Contacts

Jane Holligan, Media Relations Manager          Anna Schirmer

Alliance Trust Savings                                       Lansons Communications

Tel  +44 (0)1382 306064                                   Tel  +44 (0)20 7294 3605

Mobile  07745 783212                                      Email  alliancetrust@lansons.com

Email  jane.holligan@alliancetrust.co.uk      

Web  www.alliancetrust.co.uk

 

 

Notes to editors

  1. Alliance Trust is the brand name of Alliance Trust Savings, a financial services company that offers                  investment dealing, self-invested personal pensions and a choice of investment wrappers. Alliance Trust Savings administers assets on behalf of more than 52,000 customers.(as at March 7, 2008). Alliance Trust Savings is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alliance Trust PLC.
  2. Investors whose accounts have been transferred to Alliance Trust Savings from Close are invested in a selection of the following companies: Finsbury Growth & Income Trust PLC; Finsbury Worldwide Pharmaceutical Trust PLC; The Biotech Growth Trust PLC; Hansa Trust PLC; RCM Technology Trust PLC and Close Finsbury OEVCC.