Aviva, one of the UK’s largest pension providers, is moving to deliver financial advice and guidance at scale under Britain’s new Targeted Support regime, in one of the first big provider deployments since the rules took effect.

 The FTSE 100 insurer will use the wealthtech firm Ortec Finance’s OPAL planning platform, integrated through Yellowtail Conclusion’s CORD system, to build what the companies called an end-to-end digital guidance and advice service backed by human advisers.

 The stated aim is to reach customers who have historically fallen outside traditional advice, which has tended to serve wealthier clients.

What the new regime changes

 The deal is tied to a specific regulatory change. The UK’s Targeted Support regime went live on 6 April 2026 under rules the FCA confirmed as final in February, letting authorised firms offer ready-made suggestions to groups of consumers who share similar characteristics rather than assessing every case one by one.

It sits between generic guidance and full personalised advice. The FCA, which created the regime through its Advice Guidance Boundary Review, estimates that around 23 million consumers are underserved by the existing advice and guidance markets.

For providers, the regime creates demand for technology that can deliver consistent, defensible suggestions across large customer segments while keeping an audit trail. That’s the gap Aviva is filling with Ortec.

Riaan de Bruyn, Aviva’s director of consumer wealth, said the regime would “further enable us to address the advice gap with clear suggestions for customers”, while stressing that full financial advice “remains the gold standard for more complex needs”.

Whether customers will act is unproven

The demand providers are building for is not yet established. In its Advice Gap 2025 study, the lang cat, a consultancy that researches the UK advice market, found just 13% of consumers would find targeted support valuable enough to act on a provider’s suggestion.

The same study, based on YouGov polling of more than 2,000 adults and 210 advisers, found one in four advisers doubt the regime will help. Some warned it could “confuse consumers and make their situations worse”, the lang cat reported.

The advice boundary is the bigger worry

The deeper concern across the industry is the advice boundary itself. PIMFA, the trade body for wealth-management and advice firms, has warned that targeted support risks blurring into regulated advice.

“The distinction between targeted support and regulated advice must be made crystal clear,” said Simon Harrington, head of public affairs at PIMFA. Consumers, he added, “should understand that suggestions are options, not instructions”.

The FCA has acknowledged the trade-off. Sarah Pritchard, its deputy chief executive, said consumers “will receive recommendations, but they will not be based on a full, in-depth individual assessment”, and that firms “will need to make sure the recommendations are suitable”.

Providers retool for the new regime

For Ortec Finance, the Rotterdam-based investment-modelling firm, Aviva is a significant UK client as providers rebuild for the regime.

“The UK market is entering a new phase, shaped by targeted support and a growing expectation that advice can be delivered at scale,” said Mark Glover, Ortec’s head of wealth management for the UK and Ireland.

Aviva reported total group assets under management of £454 billion at the end of 2025 and serves 25.2 million customers.

The partnership is one of the first of many expected as UK providers build for a regime that, for the first time, lets them steer customers towards a decision at scale. On the lang cat’s own numbers, though, just 13% of consumers are ready to act on the kind of suggestions Aviva is building to deliver.