Royal London launches drawdown governance service

The service, designed for advisers with clients in Royal London’s Income Release drawdown plan, provides an income sustainability score for each client and tracking of progress against this score to instantly recognise those clients potentially at risk of not meeting their objectives.

It also provides information to assess the sustainability of the set target income against agreed objectives over the short and the long term, and an audit trail of client reviews carried out to help advisers meet their compliance requirements

The service also has links to other Royal London support services, such as the Income Planning Tool and At Retirement Tool.

Lorna Blyth, Pensions Investment Strategy Manager at Royal London, commented: “For those who choose to use drawdown to provide their income, it is so important that they understand all the risks that could result in their income not lasting into their ‘old age’. Sequencing risk is just one of those risks, but one that many people new to drawdown will not have encountered before. The new Drawdown Governance Service from Royal London helps advisers to simply and easily assess this risk and others, on a regular basis, so their clients have peace of mind that there are not likely to be any nasty surprises. As well as reducing the administration headache for advisers of manually reviewing an ever growing number of clients who are using drawdown, the new service helps to free up resource so more cost-effective and as a result more profitably.

“The Drawdown Governance Service simplifies and yet improves the review process, enabling advisers to focus more of their time on the delivery of financial advice to their income drawdown clients.”