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03

Pension experts urged to keep six principles in mind when designing retirement products

Open-access content Tuesday 17th March 2015

Pension professionals have been urged to keep six principles in mind when designing pension products for consumers.

The six principles cover a number of areas including pensioners running out of money, the flexibility and portability of schemes and managing investment risk against volatility.

The guiding principles form part of an interim report from the National Employment Savings Trust (NEST), based on a consultation about the future of retirement it launched last year.

According to NEST, evidence from the consultation suggested "consumers are responding positively to the flexibility being offered by the new freedoms".

Mark Fawcett, NEST chief investment officer, said: "The new freedom and choice reforms provide a great opportunity to deliver innovative solutions for millions of savers who will be increasingly reliant on DC [defined contribution] pots. What we are seeing is a strong consensus emerging on good quality default retirement income solutions playing a central role in helping these savers achieve better retirement outcomes.

"Much of the evidence we are analysing indicates broad agreement that helping savers mitigate the risk of outliving their savings will be a key feature for default solutions right for the DC-dependent generation."

The six principles for designing retirement defaults for auto-enrolment savers are:

1.   Living longer than expected and running out of money is the key risk in retirement and a critical input into retirement income solutions

2.   Savers should expect to spend most or all of their pension pots during their retirement

3.   Income should be stable and sustainable

4.   Managing investment risk is crucial as volatility can be especially harmful in income drawdown-type arrangements

5.   Providers should look to offer flexibility and portability wherever possible

6.   Inflation risk should be managed but not necessarily hedged

The IFoA said members should have guidance throughout their lifetime and were more likely to engage in financial decision-making if they believe their efforts would "ultimately lead to positive outcomes", but there was a risk of information overload.

Gareth Connolly, chair of the IFoA's pension board, said: "There is a risk of overwhelming individuals if they are required to pull together large amounts of information and then use it to make complex decisions. If individuals are overwhelmed in this way, there is a risk that they will be less engaged in decision-making."

The full report on the consultation will be published later in the year.

This article appeared in our March 2015 issue of The Actuary.
Click here to view this issue
Filed in:
03
Topics:
Pensions

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