For example, while a client may have used the government’s pension hunter to find the value of their missing pension pots, they may only receive parts of the information required, and they may also need help in understanding the details they do obtain.
Surely, then, it makes sense to have advisers more involved in the pension hunting process, thereby ensuring their clients are able to make the most informed decision about their financial futures.
However, how can advisers help where other providers and platforms fail?
It would make sense for advisers to be involved with the pension hunting process from the get-go. And to ensure that clients can trust advisers, they must ensure that the process is as simple and transparent as possible.
Thankfully for advisers, there are tools and third parties on hand to help. Indeed, there are online platforms that offer an impartial service to track down a client’s lost pensions and display all the information in a clear, concise format.
And when an adviser has access to such information, they will be able to offer the appropriate advice to their client – be it pension pot consolidation or creating a new investment strategy.
Such tools are admittedly more of a rarity. As discussed earlier, the majority are either biased to one provider, or do not improve the efficiency of the pension hunting process.
Consequently, some advisers may be wary of the cost (both financial and time) when using different platforms or technologies; it can be a laborious process and consumes a lot of resources to manually track down lost pensions.
Use of technology
Thankfully, the right tools do exist and once onboarded appropriately, the benefits to advisers of using such platforms far outweigh the cost.
For example, our own financial wellbeing platform Mintago has found more than £4m worth of lost pension pots with our pension hunter service in the past two years alone; when you extrapolate these figures across the market, it highlights the value such tools can offer.
And the ease with which advisers will be able to hunt down lost pensions has the potential to transform the advice they can offer clients by showing them, in real terms, exactly how much money is saved in different places.
Thereafter the guidance they offer will take into account the client’s complete financial picture, meaning better informed and more accurate advice.
What’s more, facilitating a transparent process will enhance clients’ confidence in an adviser.
Indeed, recent research has suggested that adults are wary to take advice from advisers because their processes are too complex, and they use too much jargon in their explanations.
