Online trumps face-to-face:
Over a third (35%) are keen to access the information online while 20% would like to speak to someone face to face and, 15% prefer the telephone service. Interestingly, the second highest proportion (27%) would look to use a combination of the three depending on what they wanted to know which suggests that the service may need to prepare for repeat engagements with the same pre-retiree.
When asked how long they believe the sessions should last, they wanted face to face appointments to last the longest (50 minutes) followed by online (42 minutes) and phone (27 minutes). A third (33%) of people felt that face to face appointments should ‘last as long as is needed’ which may not be practical when the service is launched.
First Steps Not Final Destination:
The most common topic that people wanted to discuss was potential pension income (61%) followed by where to get more information (36%), how their finance worked as a couple (25%) and where to get advice (23%). This seems to suggest that once people understood the basics, they saw Pension Wise as informing their next steps by directing them to trusted sources of assistance.
Interesting, guidance on long term care (21%) was of more interest than savings (18%) and investments (19%) which seems to suggest that more people feel they need to understand the implications of this later life issue – rather than topics they may be more familiar with from their working life.
Andrew Megson, Managing Director of Retirement, said:
“Overall, the clear message that is coming out from consumers is that they see the Pension Wise service as the start of the retirement decision making journey rather than the end. While two-thirds want to understand their potential retirement income, 36% are keen to know where to get further information and 23% want to know where to get advice.
“This means that there is a significant opportunity for advisers to not only speak to their existing customers but also to reach those who may previously not felt they needed advice. It is important that advisers do their best to ensure that people are in a position to build a secure retirement for themselves by touching on topics such as the level of guaranteed income they need to live on.
“It is interesting to see that the online Pension Wise service has come out on top, as you might imagine that the interactive nature of face-to-face guidance or telephone support would be more popular. However, the website allows people to access the information at a time suitable to them, without an appointment and for as long as they feel the need. That said, if you type pensions into google, you get almost 68 million responses so people may well find that they end up confused and using the telephone or face to face options as well.”
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