Brexit and the potential impact to your clients

Find out how the UK leaving the EU affects your clients' savings, retirement and protection business with us and see our answers to frequently asked questions on Brexit

The UK formally left the EU on 31 January 2020 and the Government agreed to a transition period with the EU until the 31 December 2020. During this time all EU law, rules and regulations still applied in the UK and between the UK and the EU. This means that your clients' portfolios and protection business with us didn't change during the transition period, however they may change from 1 January 2021.

What does this mean for your clients?

There hasn’t been a deal agreed yet that covers financial services, which may affect your clients. During this fast moving situation, we'll update our customer website with more information and we suggest you keep checking there as more details are announced. In the meantime we've produced these Q&As for our customers.

If your clients bought savings, retirement or protection products from us in the UK and are currently – and will continue to be – permanently resident in the UK, there is no change and their portfolios and protection will remain valid. The majority of our customers are resident in the UK, therefore most of your clients won’t be affected by what happens.

If any of your clients are not currently resident in the UK or if they expect to stop being a UK resident in the future, then depending on the type of business they have with us, they may see restrictions on changes they can make to their plans/policies.

Here's a snapshot of some of the changes we're currently aware of:

Aviva Platform & Individual Protection

  • It has recently become clear that, with current pan-European banking rules coming to an end post-Brexit, no similar agreement has been reached. This means individual banks will be responsible for making arrangements with other European countries if they wish to do so. This has led to several UK banks closing the UK bank accounts of EU residents, if your clients are affected, they may have already been contacted by their bank. We emailed all adviser Aviva Platform users on 18 December 2020 with further information.
  • For clients resident in France, the French financial regulator (ACPR) has issued a ruling meaning that, where UK insurers have lost their pan-European trading permissions as a result of Brexit, restrictions will come into force from 1 January 2021. Our current understanding is that there will be restrictions for existing business.  No new business will be accepted from French residents. We'll be emailing advisers who have Pension Portfolio clients that are affected.

We're monitoring developments and have written to the regulator to seek clarity on the restrictions. We'll update this article as and when required.