Strong rise in pension referrals by non-pension professionals

Research from TailorMade Independent shows that this is an increasingly common occurance, and it's easy to see why. The prize for clients and their professional advisers is large: the Prudential has put at £3 billion the value of significantly underutilised pension assets in preserved pension schemes alone (Q4 2012). With most such policy holders / clients unaware of this issue, there is substantial scope for professional advisers to play a role in educating and referring their clients for specialist advice.

However, whilst the full impact of the RDR upon clients will not shake-out for many months to come, it is already clear that many clients will find themselves without professional advice from the financial services community, particularly in pensions.

Tony Williams, Introducer Recruitment Manager at TailorMade Independent, puts this down to two main reasons:

“As a result of the RDR, many FS professionals have left and are continuing to leave the industry with those who remain segmenting their client database targeting only those clients who can pay / are willing to pay their advice fees. Many high street banks are also withdrawing from the retail client advice business, making thousands of previous in-house advisers redundant. If we add to this that many clients are wholly disenchanted with the FS industry (and its seemingly never-ending litany of scandals and rip-offs), a new scenario has emerged whereby sceptical clients are turning to other professional advisers for pension information.”