Punter Southall has launched a digital retirement planning solution for businesses and their employees, as well as pension schemes and their members.
The solution – Pension Potential – aims to take the complexity out of retirement planning by providing personalised financial guidance and advice to individuals, helping them to make informed decisions about their pension and retirement options.
Punter Southall said the offering aims to address the so-called advice gap – noting that, between October 2022 and March 2023, 43,366 pots entered into drawdown with no advice or guidance, equivalent to 39.1% of those entering drawdown.
Pension Potential managing director Steve Butler said: "Pension Potential simplifies retirement planning; ensuring individuals can achieve their retirement goals. People can often feel overwhelmed when thinking about their retirement, but by bringing together key information all in one place, along with access to low-cost advice, people can easily understand how to achieve the retirement lifestyle they aspire to."
Pension Potential has a range of simple tools including online retirement and lifestyle calculators and an ‘all of market' annuity search solution to select the best deals. It also gives access to personalised retirement recommendations with an easy to follow ‘advice journey' which ends with a video call with a financial adviser.
This comes as Boring Money and Wealth Wizards have announced a strategic partnership to address the advice gap.
The consumer investment website and financial guidance and advice technology provider said the partnership will focus on the 12 million UK adults in the advice gap who want some help around planning for their retirement, and deliver a retirement planning calculator to Boring Money's readers, with follow-up content, actions and independent pension provider reviews to support learning and informed choices.
Boring Money chief executive Holly Mackay said: "We know that people struggle with pensions and retirement, literally stumbling around in the dark. We wanted to partner with Wealth Wizards to combine their tech and diagnostic skills, with our ability to create targeted content journeys and pension ‘best buys'. Our combined skillsets help people not just to see where they are today, but also to understand how to improve their prospects and take action in a way which feels accessible and relevant to them."
The firms said the Financial Conduct Authority's recent Advice Guidance Boundary Review had proposed a strong emphasis on financial services firms using targeted support as one of three key pillars to deliver better customer outcomes.
They said the partnership would explore how diagnostic customer journeys can be paired with independent, research-backed educational content and independently-curated product shortlists to support more informed consumer choices.
Wealth Wizards chief executive Ben Hampton added: "The industry now needs to look beyond the headlines of the Advice Guidance Boundary Review and turn its attention to how the review can practically unlock better consumer outcomes. By collaborating with Holly and the Boring Money team, we can weave together our complimentary skills to move from the regulatory aspirations to understanding how new forms of connected and actionable help can work in practice."
The firms said their first pilot would see Wealth Wizard's pension guidance capabilities integrated into Boring Money's educational content and independent pension provider comparison tables to create a unique pensions guidance tool.
