Michelle Cracknell, chief executive at The Pension Advisory Service, was the penultimate speaker. Highlights of her presentation included the revelation of a plan to allow clients to share the abridged fact-find generated by TPAS’s guidance councillor with financial advisers.
The initiative is straightforward. Users of the guidance service who go on to seek financial advice will be able to pass on their personal report, which is not as detailed as a traditional adviser fact-find, to their adviser.
Ms Cracknell said this would serve as a good “entree” to the development of an adviser-client relationship.
The proposal has been commended by advisers, but many have said their compliance department would prevent them from using the data.
She said: “We spoke to the FCA about it and it said the customer has to own the data and the IFA would need to check up on the data, but we think it would be a great start.
“We put all the data we collect on our customers in our customer management system, so the ability of creating a report on what the customer has told us is already there, but what we do need to have in place is a safe and secure mechanism for sending it onto the customer. The customer will then be able to share it with their adviser."
She added that the customer will need to take some responsibility that if something they told Tpas "wasn’t quite right", they would correct it when they have a conversation with the adviser.
Ms Cracknell also revealed an increase in the number of people expressing reticence about the legal requirement, since 2015 and the introduction of pension freedoms, for those with pension pots of more that £30,000 to seek advice.
She labelled the mentality as a "sad and unintended consequence" of pension freedoms.
“I think it is part of the British psyche," she said. “I don’t think we like being told what to do and I think one of the roles guidance plays for people is to try to help them understand what they don’t know, and the benefit they can get by investing a bit of time thinking about their pension. Sometimes, as a consequence of that, they realise the benefit of seeking advice."
The final keynote speaker, Neil Esslemont, head of the industry liaison team at The Pensions Regulator, delivered a comprehensive overview on the progression of auto-enrolment.
In short, auto-enrolment appears to be a success. He said 234,589 employers have provided information to show they are meeting their auto-enrolment duties – also known as declaration of compliance – covering 22.8m workers, as at the end of August.
What is more, 3,805 employers have completed a re-declaration of compliance and 229,000 workers have been re-enrolled.
