Is a little help enough

Hot on the heels of Hargreaves Lansdown launching an annuity brokering service are Tesco. Both I guess will claim its better to get a little help than just roll over.

Are they right? In most cases you will get a better deal. And it’s easy to explain isn’t it? Just look at all the websites doing annuity comparison. All say come here and get 100% more. And most still say its free.

Of course they don’t mention the harder facts – ceding scheme checks – if you put your bp reading in not just that you have the condition, then you can get more again – the fact the shape on your annuity is just as important as the annuity yourself. – it’s not actually free – maybe drawdown could work for you

These are harder messages.

Will the FCA act? Pretty unlikely as most customers will be better off by going to these sites. Not as good as going to an adviser, but mostly better than roll over

And that is the problem facing advisers in nutshell. Most people will take path of least resistance. Make it easy and show some fancy numbers and people will come. The burden of proof and rules around Exo are lighter, and probably won’t change massively under FCA

Individual advisers don’t have the marketing power of HL or Tesco, so how do you compete? Should you even try? Are these the same customers you are trying to attract?

Individually you will all have a view. Collectively you all know that introducing customers to advice or guidance at retirement will lead to better outcomes.

Working out how to promote that general point as a collective feels like something that could challenge the comparison sites.