Offer More Options open to all

Helen Morrissey looks at the new initiatives open to advisers to provide greater choice to retirees

The at-retirement market has undergone significant evolution in terms of product innovation and regulatory change. Over the past five years we have seen the advent of variable and fixed term annuities and the continued development of the postcode and investment linked annuity space. Most recently the new government launched a consultation process around abolishing the compulsion to purchase an annuity meaning that today’s retirees have more choice than ever before. 

However, despite this, there continues to be a lack of awareness about the choices on offer with many clients defaulting into a conventional annuity.

There have been many initiatives aimed at raising awareness of the options available – Living Time’s Offer More Options campaign being one of the best known. When Living Time launched the campaign in 2008 it was a great success with advisers and key industry stakeholders signing up in a bid to provide further education around the different options available and support advisers in highlighting these to their clients. The campaign has recently stepped up a gear with the emphasis moving from industry ownership of the campaign towards the adviser community.

Shift in perspective

“We are now at the point where ownership of Offer More Options needs to transfer to advisers,” says Living Time’s marketing manager Steve Lowe. “The more we work with advisers, the more we realise how passionate they are about the process and we want them to move forward with this.”

Living Time has been working with The Retirement Partnership to refresh their education material to make it more aimed at advisers. It is hoped that eventually advisers will be able to differentiate themselves by calling themselves Offer More Options advisers and they will be able to use the OMO logo in all their client facing materials. 

The Retirement Partnership’s managing director Steve Lewis is relishing the challenge of helping advisers step up to the challenge.

“Most advisers recognise the opportunities within this market but don’t have the time to fully develop their business strategy to encompass this,” he says. “We engage with advisers directly to offer them access to information and help them move their business forward.”

High level of commitment

To be seen as an Offer More Options adviser the adviser will need to demonstrate their commitment to highlighting the different options to their clients on an ongoing basis.

 “We will make resources available to help them move their business forward,” says Lowe. “We will look to assess their membership of the campaign annually to ensure they have embraced the concept fully.”

Advisers able to demonstrate they have embedded the Offer More Options concept within their business are eligible to win a monthly award. The first of these was won in July by Maurice Scant, a financial planner for West Country-based Tom French & Associates. The adviser firm is committed to rolling out the campaign across all 50 of its advisers and is incorporating the Offer More Options brand into their client facing material. 

Educating the public

“From our point of view the Offer More Options campaign is about educating as many people as possible about the options available at retirement to ensure the client extracts best value from their hard earned retirement savings,” says Tom French managing director, Chris Glazier. “Far too many people at retirement fail to take advice and often end up with the first offer that they receive, without ever being aware they have more choices. 

“We want the Offer More Options campaign to increase awareness and allow people to get a fair outcome from their lifetime of retirement saving. From a practical perspective we have introduced a new process and client friendly documents that help each and every client at retirement to understand the full range of options available to them.”