Novia poaches Skandia staff for Aegon project

Novia has poached five staff from Skandia to work on its new project with Aegon.

The wrap has raided key personnel from Skandia to work on the recently announced programme with Aegon which will see the insurer launch two Novia-powered platform propositions later in the year.

Alison Sharpe, business architect for Skandia Investment Solutions, joins Novia in the summer as business architect whilst Matt Roblyn, currently working at Skandia as part of Old Mutual Technical Support, joins Bill Vasilieff's outfit as IT manager at the end of April.

Andy Ewell also joins Novia soon to work on the testing and delivery of the Aegon platform after recently leaving Skandia, where he worked as testing manager.

Meanwhile Paul Downing, previously head of operations at Skandia Investment Services, joined six months ago as Novia Investment Services head of operations.

Novia Investment Solutions was set up as a separate company in order to build Aegon's corporate wrap and at retirement platforms.

In addition, Novia project manager Rob Duncan - who is helping build the new Aegon platform - was previously programme manager on a number of Skandia projects including workflow, proposition and migration. He left Skandia in January.

Finally, Novia Investment Services head of propositional change Richard Budnyj joined the wrap around a year ago after a brief stint with Cofunds. Before that, he was at Skandia.

Novia CEO Bill Vasilieff previously worked at Selestia and SkandiaMultiFunds but left before the the two Old Mutual divisions merged into the Skandia UK supermarket

Last month, IFAonline revealed Aegon's new Novia-built platforms, set for a phased roll-out later this year, will likely offer wrappers including SIPPs, ISAs and an offshore bond as part of a five-year deal.

Adrian Grace, the newly-promoted CEO of Aegon UK, said he hopes the platforms will be different "from anything else currently in the market".