The advice gap for the majority of savers needs to be filled as, in general, retirees do not seek financial advice from a regulated professional and we do not believe that this is likely to change until the costs for both initial advice and ongoing support are significantly reduced.
Then there is the issue of guidance, especially when it comes to those DC-dependent savers who admit to being “at sea” when it comes to making one of the last major decisions they are faced with. There are already services that offer guidance to savers who need it, but the industry needs to work out how to make this more widely accessible.
It is in everybody’s interests that the billions of pounds a year extra that have been saved by the 10m plus new savers since auto-enrolment’s launch in 2012 are actually turned into a genuine pension income that will last them throughout their retirement.
Phil Brown is director of policy and external communications at B&CE, provider of The People’s Pension
