Power said ongoing product development would tend towards giving stability. “All the surveys say people want some type of stability.”
In the new world of RDR, auto enrolment and the Budget changes, he expected guidance and information to be provided digitally, so that customers could see all their holdings in one place, while advisers would be required for some needs-based selling and to deal with customers on a more transactional basis.
He said the challenge for advisers was to manage customers’ transition into retirement and to ‘keep them over this period’. He added there is a mountain of data that those wishing to control the destiny of retirement savings – with 30,000 sources of freely available open data, as well as providers’ and advisers’ customers’ data, meaning complacency was not an option.
Deloitte research showed that for pensions transactions, 48 per cent would be self-advised and 36 per cent advised, while for investments, 65 per cent would opt for self-advice and 28 per cent would seek advice.
Power said auto enrolment would drive employers to evaluate their existing benefit structures and whether they needed to be changed.
