“So levels of advice need to be at a level that people can appreciate and understand what they're doing and why they're doing it.”
Bell believed the pensions dashboard will perk people’s interest to ask questions about their pensions and perhaps get them to seek out advice once they see how much they have actually saved.
He also said it needed to be made easier from a regulation perspective to allow pension providers to provide educational pieces to their members.
“The worry and the effort that goes into a communication from a pension scheme to its members, to comply with regulations, not to fall foul of anything, not to say stuff it shouldn't say, makes it pretty unintelligible,” he added.
Bell also pointed out there was nothing in the manifestos to address financial education or improve it.
He said: “None of this is rocket science. But because these things are not vote winners, cross party agreement has to happen. In order to stop the ability for tinkering around the edges to upset people's well laid plans for the future.
“The overall message is we're approaching a bit of a tipping point. And unless something happens now, the success of auto enrolment, however you define it, is going to be undermined.”
alina.khan@ft.com
