Pensions advice gap generating more opportunities for advisers

17 September 2015

Industry experts from the mortgage and pensions fields have highlighted gaps in the pension advice process as a growing opportunity for the intermediary community.

Hosting the seminar, ‘Pension reform – customer reactions and motivations under the new rules’ at this year’s Financial Service Expo (FSE) London, mortgage market ‘godfather’, John Malone, highlighted this issue as being “the biggest story of the whole exhibition”.

He said: “Potentially there will be more people cashing in their annuities next year than there are first-time buyers buying, second-steppers buying and people taking out equity release mortgages. This represents a huge, huge opportunity for the industry. One of the problems we have at the moment is - who gives the advice? The answer is not clear, which means there are opportunities to be explored.”

Michelle Cracknell, Chief Executive of the Pensions Advisory Service, agreed with the points raised, adding:

“A number of people are either being required, because of their provider or under regulatory guidance, to go and get financial advice. This kind of undermines the real value attached to the advice process as essentially people are being told to do it rather than really appreciate just how much it can benefit them.

“Importantly, when people are looking for this kind of advice they are also struggling to find advisers who will take on the cases. There are a couple of reasons for this - sometimes the cases are very small and as an adviser you have the right to say that’s not my business model, I don’t deal with customers like that. And we don’t have a very good matching service between customers and advisers. I think we, as an industry, really need to work on improving this to try and bridge this advice gap.”

FSE London is taking place today at Old Billingsgate in the heart of London’s Square Mile. Alongside the seminar sessions it will offer delegates access to a range of lenders, providers and distributors actively looking to build relationships with the adviser community. Over 70 exhibitors will appear including lenders such as Accord, Lloyds Banking Group, Halifax Intermediaries, Santander for Intermediaries, Skipton Building Society, Virgin Money, and many more.