Helping advisers turn retirement into something real

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Financial advisers are committed to doing the best they can for their clients. Advised clients benefit from having a professional on side to counsel them about their retirement options and help them work towards a standard in later life that they can feel happy with.

Advised clients generally feel more confident about their retirement plans, but they are by no means immune from wealth-related worries and concerns. AKG’s research, which we sponsored in partnership with Fidelity, found clients worry about taking the right level of risk with investment, as well as their estate more broadly. For example, whether they should factor property into their retirement and inheritance tax planning.

It’s also important to recognise that taking financial advice does not make them unsusceptible from the nation’s biggest retirement quandary: when is the right time to retire?

What advisers need to help clients

Where retirement was once a set moment in time, the freedom brought about by changes to pensions legislation in 2015 means soon-to-be retirees often retire in part before hanging up their hat altogether. Now when people reach an age to decide it’s time to change gear, they shift down one or two, not pull on the handbrake. This can make retirement planning more complicated and emphasises why it’s more important than ever that advisers can provide the products and services necessary to give their clients peace of mind in their later years.

We’d like to help them do just that. The research casts light on a number of factors that firms partnering with advisers should consider if they aspire to help advisers ensure their clients enjoy a comfortable retirement.  

Exploring what type of solutions advisers considered the most usable for clients at present, the top two categories picked out were those combining annuity and drawdown capabilities (70%) and guaranteed lifetime income (66%). At 47%, ‘normal’ drawdown was still viewed by some as a useful avenue.

Delving even deeper, advisers were asked to rate the type of retirement income investment solutions they see being used the most for clients today. Parallelling the question above, advisers highly rated a ‘guaranteed income from within drawdown account’ at 57%.

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As advisers increasingly outsource investment management to specialists, it’s no surprise ‘MPS’ was in second place (38%). Good support for bucketed/multiple investment strategies was also evidenced at 33%. In line with persistent market volatility, advisers also expressed positivity towards ‘smoothed investment funds’ (20%).

But this market isn’t static, and advisers were asked what could be enhanced in future to better help them and clients, either through development or innovation. Better use of technology (48%) was highest rated, ahead of better use of AI (44%). Just behind first place though was better value for money for clients (47%).

Technology and AI as solutions to help time-pressed advice firms operate more efficiently, therefore allowing them to serve more customers, better, is a key conversation taking place within the sector today. The findings mirrored that exactly. When asked which type of providers they believe will flourish in the pensions/retirement market in 2025 and beyond, advisers placed specialist technology providers at the head of the pack (59%).

Similarly, clear support was exhibited towards master trust providers (53%) and life offices/insurance companies (51%). Platform operators were rated somewhat below at 40%. It’s good to see advisers recognise the capacity of these types of companies to apply their scale and prominence to develop appropriate pension and retirement solutions for end clients’ needs.

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Adviser responses also indicated they believed providers would succeed in assisting them in the future if they ticked multiple boxes, with technology once again playing an important role. They included operational resilience/financial strength (38%), digital/online/AI capability and functionality (36%), a one-stop-shop range of solutions (34%), technical knowledge and support teams (34%), and an array of retirement planning apps and tools (33%).

Here at Standard Life, we’re taking into account what advisers and their clients are feeling about retirement related matters, and in particular what we need to do to evolve to continue providing the right mix of retirement income options as client and adviser demand shifts. Providing advisers with the right tools enables them to best serve their clients, paving the way for a happy retirement for more people.

To find our more visit: Retirement income options | Standard Life Adviser

 

Sources

¹ AKG in association with Standard Life and Fidelity - Ten Years of Freedoms, 11 June 2025