Small Pension Funds

Baroness Greengross Excerpts

Tuesday 27th November 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Greengross]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to ensure access to good advice for people with small pension funds, and to maximise such people’s retirement income.

[Baroness Greengross]

My Lords, I start by declaring an interest. I head up the ILC-UK and the International Longevity Centre Global Alliance, which look at the impact of demographic change on all our services as we plan the future. I am really pleased that we have an opportunity to discuss what I want to look at—people with small pension pots—and the impact of the Financial Services Authority’s retail distribution review, which will be implemented on 1 January 2013. I support the principles underpinning the RDR; they are excellent. But there is at least one unintended consequence that might well follow, which really results from the fact that advisers will no longer be paid by commission but will charge a fee for the work that they do. I and others think that people on modest incomes will either be priced out of or excluded from the advice market. I have a deep concern that lots of people will not get the advice that they need. There will be an advice gap, with a detrimental effect on their incomes that will continue throughout their retirement, which as we know is likely to last much longer than they think it will last. These tend to be the people who have the least knowledge about what is going to happen to them regarding their pension when they retire.

The DWP estimates that by 2050 there will be 4.7 million pension pots of £2,000 or less, with many more than today expected to reach retirement with these small pots. The National Association of Pension Funds has said that there are currently 1.1 million retained DC pension funds with less than £5,000 in them; collectively these hold £2.3 billion of pension assets. A recent survey by KPMG of more than 3,000 customers found that only 31% would be prepared to pay for financial advice; 54% would pay no more than £50 for an hour’s advice; and only 1% would pay more than £200. There is a big risk here. These are exactly the sort of people who will receive no advice at all. Deloitte has recently found that more than 5 million clients may be left without advice as a result of RDR, as costs are made transparent and independent financial advisers focus, inevitably, on higher-net-worth customers.

Partnership Assurance has given us figures that tell us that 78% of annuities sold in the UK in 2011 were for fund sizes of under £40,000. For people with impaired health or lifestyle conditions, the difference between the best and worst rates can be up to 40%. At the same time, very few people exercise or even understand the benefits of exercising the open market option. Figures from the Association of British Insurers report that while joint annuities accounted for 42% in 2011, up from 29% in 2008, only 46% of annuities were bought via the open market option in 2011, up from 35% in 2008. But more people with larger pension funds choose this route than those with smaller pots—the people that I am really concerned about.

Ways of improving the situation might be to narrow the advice gap so that those with very small incomes have access to advice and do not miss the retirement income that they could have, and avoiding an information overload for people who just do not understand what all this is about anyway. Much more needs to be done to ensure that customer information is developed—and it must be from a consumer, rather than compliance, perspective, because people are just not interested, do not understand and then suffer later on. Urgent steps need to be taken to halt the continued erosion of the culture of saving that we used to have in this country. Inevitably, at the moment, we have lost a huge amount of trust in the industry, which is very sad and adds to this inevitable problem. The Government could also perhaps provide a much clearer distinction between the provision of information and the giving of advice, making it much clearer to what extent providers are able to guide customers without it being deemed advice, and joining up the public policy agenda on financial advice, which would enable saving.

In terms of the industry, I very much welcome the ABI’s recent consultation to increase transparency in the annuity market by publishing annuity rates, as part of its code of conduct on retirement choices. I also welcome the fact that PICA, the Pensions Income Choice Association, is working with other industry participants to build a directory of advisers and shopping around brokers who can help investors, particularly people with small pots, to shop around when they retire. This will help customers to understand the decisions they need to make, the products that are available, and how they can shop around. We know that there are several annuity “interface portals” for people who have sufficient IT skills, but our real worry are those who are excluded from all this, because they just do not have the knowledge that is necessary.

The mechanics of the pensions industry have made it very difficult for retirees to get good annuity rates, as we know. Annuity advisers and providers should explore greater uses for technology in delivering advised and non-advised services to help people understand their options at retirement and help them to make the right decisions.

I will end by sharing a real concern I have that lack of cohesion and policy fragmentation created by silos between the Financial Services Authority, leading on RDR, HM Treasury, with the policy lead on financial advice, and the DWP, leading on retirement outcomes for pensioners, will result in the poorest and least well-off people receiving sub-optimal retirement outcomes. Perhaps something can be done to raise awareness of the challenges and responsibilities that individuals have, particularly those over 50, who need to focus on a multitude of retirement decisions and have far fewer pensions and savings assets at their disposal than they actually need. Nobody really believes that they are going to live for as long as they will, and nobody really calculates what they are going to need over all these years, with the need for care, and so on. Explicit government support and signposting would help to ensure that these people—the small pension pot holders—have as easy a time as possible in getting help with their shopping around. Will the Minister consider creating some kind of forum so that the industry, the regulator, the DWP and HM Treasury can get together to meet and discuss how better to work together to improve customer outcomes?