NextWealth and Richard Parkin Consulting have just published fresh research, Retirement Advice Outlook Next Five Years, kindly supported by Bravura Solutions. Based on a survey of 267 financial advisers, in-depth qualitative interviews and data from platforms, the report helps firms to look ahead to consider the impact of recent and planned future changes on their business.

The report covers:

• The growing importance of retirement to financial advice firms and how that will impact those firms going forward.
• The rise of CRPs, covering more than just investments, but also cash flow modelling, specific attitude to risk questionnaires in retirement, etc.
• Products recommended as part of a decumulation portfolio and which products might gain traction.
• Preferred platforms for retirement clients and the functionality still missing from platforms to allow advisers to manage client assets in retirement.
• Projected DB transfer volumes and the impact of client demand, PI and regulatory change on how advisers manage their DB transfer business.
• PI rates increases and the impact on adviser businesses.

A few key highlights from the retirement research

• In the next 12 months, 59% of advisers will have an agreed centralised retirement proposition, defined as: ‘A common and consistent approach to retirement advice that is followed by the whole firm and will typically cover investment and withdrawal strategy but may also extend into fact finding, assessing attitude to risk, etc.’
• Multi-asset, multi-manager and in-house models are the preferred investment choices for drawdown portfolios. Looking ahead, advisers will use more multi-asset funds and equity release products. More than half of advisers say they ‘never’ outsource investment solutions for clients in retirement.
• Nearly one quarter of advisers have a different preferred platform for accumulation than for decumulation. Standard Life, Transact and Aegon are preferred more by advisers for managing client assets in drawdown.
• 40% of advisers have renewed their PI cover. The average premium increase is 21%.

Get in touch for more details or to buy the research retirement@nextwealth.co.uk.

About the Author

Heather has spent most of her career in financial services helping asset managers, platforms and financial advisers improve their propositions, customer communication and to benchmark success against competitors. She was Head of Platforum until December 2017 and has also worked in digital marketing at Hitwise and Econsultancy.