Pension flexibilities

11th December 2014

Jonathan Watts-Lay, Director, WEALTH at work recently spoke with Workplace Savings and Benefits on the new ‘pension flexibilities’.

Jonathan Watts-Lay comments: “I think there’s pluses and minuses with the guidance guarantee.  The positive things about it is that everybody knows that within four to six months of their stated retirement date they will have to be communicated with so that they know that the guidance guarantee is available.  Now, whether they take it up or not is another question.”

Watts-Lay continues, “I know there’s some sort of negative points that people raise.  Certainly some of the larger companies that we deal with have said, well, hold on a minute, it’s kind of too little too late, isn’t it, because we’re basing that on stated retirement dates which may not be accurate anyway.  Isn’t this similar to what we did with the open-market option where we had to send a notification, again four to six months before retirement?  And we know from statistics that that doesn’t actually change behaviour.”

Jonathan Watts-Lay concludes with “I think a lot of large employers will do far more than the guidance guarantee, which clearly is a good thing, to ensure that their staff understand what options are available and what the advantages and disadvantages of those options are.  And I think we will see a lot more employers wanting to make sure that  regulated advice is available to ensure that individuals implement the right choices.”

Please click here to view the webinar.