So I lied a little bit but only a little bit. I actually can do this week’s Update. It’s surely impossible that a man in my position got the day (not date) of his Edinburgh event mixed up, isn’t it? Sounds implausible to me.  

Anyway, here we are again and not only do you have me, but you have one very last and final reminder about HomeGame 4 tomorrow (when you read this; I’ve checked). It’s sold out now for in-person tix, but you can stream it for free by registering here. It isn’t possible to just tune in without pre-registering so for all the time it takes just get it done now and then you can pop in and out as much as you like.  

We’re covering consolidation, whether planning lives its best life in bigger or smaller firms, the state of the sector in Scotland, advice academies and attracting the next generation of financial professionals and a big section on new tech. You want it in your life. 

Talking of things you want in your life, retirement advice is probably high up the list, whether you’re receiving it or giving it (it is always better to give than receive, I was always taught).  

Furrowed brows then, as the FCA’s retirement market datadump for the year ending 31 March 2024, which dumped last week, showed a reduction in the number of people taking advice at retirement. Not a huge reduction, but enough to make a party. You can find the actual data here, or Lois has done a good piece on it for Money Marketing here. We’ve updated the regulatory Tracker for Analyser subscribers with this new data.  

Annuity sales were up nearly 40%, twice the overall rate of increase. This was of course mainly without advice, and just goes to show that consumers are quite capable of working out when one figure is bigger than another one. We’ll see if those numbers track down as interest rates settle. 

There were just under 7,200 DB transfers in the period in question, and that’s down from over 18,000 the year before. I have some questions about how 18,000 were done that year, but hey ho. Are potentially suitable transfers being missed because everyone’s feart? I think they might be and I do wonder if this really very small number is something the Stratfordians are absolutely happy about. 

But our topic is really advice, and 30.9% of pension-fund-accessing-activity (we need a better word for that and it’s not ‘decumulators’ FFS) had the pleasure of your company, against 32.9% the year before. “Meh,” you say, “that’s just a rounding error.” Except the overall amount of activity went up by 40% and advice went down. One up 40%, one down 2%. I’m not an expert on statistics or that but I employ a few of them and…hang on, just checking…no, that’s a really bad result. 

So what gives? Is this an advice gap issue? Are funds just not big enough to be interesting? Are potential annuitants not a source of ongoing AUA, the fees on which can be multiplied up many times in order to interest consolidators? Drawdown access went up by 8%, and straight-up encashments which are mainly for smaller pots actually went down by about 2.5%. So it’s not an explosion in small pots. 

That leaves us with the fact that pension-fund-accessors either can’t find advice help or don’t know how to or don’t want to. Our 2024 Advice Gap report from the mighty Mike Barrett and colleagues found that 55% of adviser respondents said they’d stepped down from serving some groups of clients as a result of regulatory overheads and Consumer Duty in particular. It also found that 9% of UK consumers had paid for advice in the last two years; down from 11% the previous year. So this does start to feel like a supply issue. 

This is all starting to feel quite unsatisfactory, isn’t it? And with the advice/guidance boundary work being hoofed over the boundary wall for now and a potential paddlin’ on the blemish-free bottom of pensions coming up in a few weeks, the timing isn’t great either. Feels like something needs to give, and it’s either going to be regulation or advice businesses. Maybe technology is the answer. If only there was a conference tomorrow where we could discuss stuff like this… 

And your music choice this week is a slab of melancholia because sometimes that’s just what you get. The music may be sadboi but the video is a hoot, with what I can only assume are KLF impersonators in a basement somewhere and some girl twirling rope around suggestively. Excellent stuff. Please do enjoy Innocence Was Long Forgotten by Swallow The Sun and enjoy your day.