Scottish Widows has launched a guide for advisers planning retirement income strategies for their clients.
The Centralised Retirement Proposition guide covers the ‘at retirement’ and ‘in retirement’ stages when a customer decides to draw down their savings.
Scottish Widows said the guide is designed to be a thorough overview of the entire subject of retirement income planning.
The guide offers an overview of the elements that make up the planning process broken down into:
- Retirement income fact-find: Understanding the client’s income objectives, circumstances and financial situation;
- Risk assessment: The assessment of the client’s ability and willingness to take risk matched to their circumstances and objectives;
- Withdrawal options: The optimal way to withdraw money from a pension fund to meet the retirement income objectives;
- Investment strategy: The selection of a suitable investment approach to best match the objectives of income and risk;
- Ongoing review: The ongoing maintenance to manage changing needs, income access, and sustainability.
Director of distribution Ronnie Taylor said: “Pension freedoms have offered customers far greater choice and flexibility. However this also means advisers are now taking on ever greater responsibility for the retirement options they recommend, particularly when it comes to sustainable withdrawal strategies that aim to stop clients running out of money.
“We have developed the guide to serve as an additional point of reference to help advisers meet the diverse needs of today’s clients.”
In April Scottish Widows launched a ‘digital toolkit’ to help advisers with defined benefit (DB) transfer advice following a surge in transfer requests.
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