Last week the ABI launched the first comprehensive review of the UK’s retirement needs. In a nutshell that means we want to explore whether changes can be made to the way people turn their savings into a retirement income.
We want to gather evidence on what people think of the products, information and advice available to people when they retire and whether they are fit for the future. As an industry delivering services and products to millions of customers when they retire we believe we are well placed to lead debate in this area and help drive change.
We are asking three broad questions and we hope people will submit responses to our consultation which start to explore:
- What are people’s financial needs in retirement?
- How well does the current retirement income system cater for these needs?
- What changes do you think are needed?
However, getting people saving in the first place is one significant part of the retirement challenge, the other question that has not received as much focus is how can those savers be helped to make best use of their savings pot when they retire. We know that pension reform tends to take a long time and that it is important to think about tomorrow’s savers. But we must not lose sight of what we could do today to start making a difference to people now. That is why we are focusing on what happens as people retire and whether we could do things differently.
There has been a great deal of focus on the sale of annuities – most people do turn their pensions into an annuity as it gives them a guaranteed income bought by their savings for the rest of their life. The pensions industry launched a Code this year to try to improve that process and increase the number of people getting good outcomes throughout retirement through helping them shop around for the best deal. We want to widen this discussion to the broad range of options available to people when they retire as we know getting a good income in retirement is not just about annuities. And we want to explore what changes are necessary to meet people's changing needs.
We want evidence from pensions experts, industry, advisers, politicians, unions, think tanks, health organisations and consumer groups, as well as members of the public to get involved and give their views. We will then hold a series of workshops to drill down into those views in more detail so that we can publish a report in Spring 2014 outlining what we think some of the recommendations for reform might be.
Please visit the survey and request for evidence pages to contribute.