services founded 1971 headquarters 153 princes street ipswich suffolk united kingdom key people will self managing director products pensions self invested personal pensions number of employees 277 2016 parent aua 8.5 billion 2016 slogan working harder for every customer website http www.suffolklife.co.uk suffolk life based in ipswich suffolk is a british pensions administrator . it mainly provides the administration of self invested personal pensions sipps and personal pensions for private funds and self invested funds of third party providers . suffolk life is a non advice pension provider and is well known for its commercial property investment expertise . the company was acquired by the curtis banks group plc for 45 million from legal & general on 25 may 2016 and continues to maintain its independent name and branding . contents 1 history 2 operations 3 senior management 4 recognition 5 charity work 6 references 7 external links history edit suffolk life was established in 1971 by a group of solicitors with the aim of allowing commercial property to be purchased using pension funds . the business was founded by alan catchpole and then taken over by his son henry catchpole who held the role of managing director from 1997 until 2010 . 1 one of the company s early focuses was ssas small self administered scheme administration however in 2006 suffolk life sold this book of business to mattioli woods 2 a specialist pensions consultancy to focus on the administration of self invested personal pensions sipps . suffolk life s first sipp product the suffolk life sipp launched in 1996 was written as an insurance contract by suffolk life annuities limited an insurance company within the suffolk life group . in 2007 the suffolk life sipp closed to new business . suffolk life launched a new product the mastersipp 3 a self invested personal pension allowing more flexibility concerning the self investment of protected rights . 2010 saw the introduction of the simsipp a product aimed at those investors and advisers who would deal solely with one investment manager . they currently have partnerships with several investment managers . suffolk life introduced the smartsipp 4 in 2011 a platform based self invested personal pension sipp allowing access to funds within selected platforms and a stockbroker . suffolk life provides third party administration services for self invested pensions for the following aviva 5 clerical medical 6 prudential plc suffolk life and cofunds launched the cofunds pension account 7 in march 2010 a pension plan provided by suffolk life offering advisers and investors access to investments on the cofunds platform . in 2008 suffolk life came under ownership of the legal & general group . 8 on 21 november 2012 suffolk life announced they were acquiring a book of business from pointon york 9 following a closure of one of pointon york s schemes . this brought 1 700 investors to suffolk life s existing business . following this in may 2013 suffolk life acquired origen investment services and pearson jones plc s sipp books bringing over 700 new sipps to suffolk life . on 15 january 2016 it was announced 10 that curtis banks group plc another sipp provider was to acquire suffolk life from legal & general for 45 million . the acquisition completed on 25 may 2016 . operations edit suffolk life administers sipps on behalf of over 26 000 clients . it owns over 3 600 properties on behalf of 5 000 of those investors as at january 2016 . suffolk life employs approximately 240 staff . prior to 2006 suffolk life accepted business direct from clients without the need for adviser involvement . new business is now only accepted via financial advisers . senior management edit suffolk life is led by will self managing director . suffolk life has a medium sized board of directors from varied backgrounds . recognition edit in 2006 suffolk life became the first company in the uk to gain an investors in customers accreditation and repeated the exercise in 2008 2010 and 2012 . every time they achieved a 2 star outstanding rating . in 2014 their mastersipp product was awarded a 5 star defaqto rating . suffolk life has won the moneyfacts best sipp provider award in 2013 2014 and 2015 . charity work edit suffolk life contributes in fundraising events for many charities including the wear it pink breast cancer awareness campaign and children in need . in 2010 suffolk life took part in the each east anglia s children s hospices corporate challenge treehouse appeal whereby local companies in east anglia were asked to raise 10 000 to support the building of a new children s hospice . suffolk life raised over 10 000 for this cause . in 2012 suffolk life raised money for the east anglian air ambulance an abseil the orwell walk and many casual days were completed to raise money . for 2013 suffolk life s charity of the year who they focus on fundraising for is the somersham ward cancer support group . in 2014 suffolk life chose to support three different charities the suffolk & essex small animal welfare sesaw the suffolk accident rescue service sars and the east anglia s children s hospices each . at june they had raised over 6 500 collectively for the three charities through big and small events from the alton water run whereby 22 staff took part to several casual days and bake sales . suffolk life hold environmental days for their staff as part of their corporate and social responsibility csr and in 2014 they also held two volunteer days at each and sesaw two of their dedicated charities . references edit henry catchpole steps down suffolk life sells ssas business suffolk life launches the mastersipp suffolk life launches smartsipp product aviva norwich union with suffolk life clerical medical with suffolk life cofunds pension account with suffolk life legal & general to buy suffolk life suffolk life acquiring pointon york business curtis banks to acquire suffolk life in 45m deal money marketing . www.moneymarketing.co.uk . retrieved 2016 05 26 . external links edit suffolk life pensions limited official company website suffolk life facebook page for information about their corporate social responsibility companies portal retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title suffolk life & oldid 741769640 categories financial companies established in 1971insurance companies of the united kingdomenglish companies established in 1971 navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages add links this page was last 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