Aviva Investors has introduced a Venture Capital (VC) and Strategic Capital capability to its investment offering.

This move is part of a broader restructuring of its real assets business, now rebranded to Aviva Investors Private Markets. The VC and Strategic Capital investment desk will be created by integrating the Aviva Ventures investment team into the Private Markets division, which manages over £40bn in assets under management. This decision follows the Mansion House Compact announcement by the government in July 2023, which outlined proposals to ‘unlock’ investment into emerging industries and support growth across the wider economy. Additionally, it comes as Aviva Investors continue to expand Private Markets offering to meet the evolving demands of investors, particularly defined contribution (DC) pension funds, which have historically been unable to access or allocate to private markets investments. The team will comprise five full-time employees moving across from their existing roles.

Penfold has announced a new integration with Xero, designed to automate pension contribution progress entirely.

The service aims to reduce the administrative burden for accountants, payroll professionals and employers and saves time and resources. In particular, it eliminates the need for manual uploads or button presses, enabling employers and accountants to set and forget their pension processing. Penfold is thought to be the first pension scheme to offer this integration to mainstream payroll software. For businesses connected to Xero and Penfold, their contributions are processed automatically every time payroll is run or re-run in Xero. This will also be included in Penfold’s workplace pension. Penfold said it will introduce more features soon, including integrations to enhance the ease and efficiency of pension management for clients.

Wealth at Work has launched an interactive financial wellbeing platform, money&me, designed to help employees build their knowledge of money.

This is done through gamified learning and covers a range of financial topics including managing money, tax, savings & investments, financial health, pensions and life after work. The platform was built by Landscape to enhance Wealth at Work’s existing financial wellbeing offering including comprehensive financial education programmes and one-to-one guidance. Commenting on the new platform, Wealth at Work director, Jonathan Watt’s Lay, said: “We already deliver financial wellbeing and retirement services to millions of employees and pension scheme members and are excited to launch our latest digital offering ‘money&me’ in our venture to provide a one stop shop for all financial wellbeing requirements. Helping employees build their financial resilience and providing them with the knowledge and tools to do so, has never been more important."

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