One in four ask friends and family for advice on pensions

Citation

(2013), "One in four ask friends and family for advice on pensions", Quality in Ageing and Older Adults, Vol. 14 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/qaoa.2013.55914aaa.006

One in four ask friends and family for advice on pensions

Article Type: News and events From: Quality in Ageing and Older Adults, Volume 14, Issue 1

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  Nearly a quarter of working people in Britain (23 per cent) select “friends and family” for pensions advice, up from 15 per cent in 2011.

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  45 per cent of non-retired Brits said they have never reviewed their financial plans for retirement.

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  More than a third (35 per cent) opted for the “default” investment option when they reviewed their pension, 41 per cent could not remember.

Research from Baring Asset Management (Barings), the international investment management firm, has found significantly more people are turning to friends or family for advice on their pensions while the number of people turning to financial advisers remains flat. Nearly one in four non-retired respondents (23 per cent), equivalent to 8.4 million British adults, selected “friend or family member” from a list of preferred advisers on pension assets.

The figures for those aged 18-24 are even more acute: well over a third (37 per cent) ask friends or family, far higher than the 25 per cent that turn to a financial adviser or accountant. In the next age segment, those aged 25-34, 27 per cent say they ask friends and family, slightly more than 25 per cent who discuss their pension needs with a financial adviser.

Despite the changing sources of financial advice, the majority of non-retired British adults (58 per cent) said that they do consider it their responsibility to ensure they fully understand the asset allocation of their pension funds. However, when asked when they last reviewed their pension plans, 45 per cent of non-retired respondents said they had “never” done so, while for those who had reviewed their plans this was, on average, 2.4 years ago. When asked about the last time they had made a change to their pension and investments in order to better reflect their risk profile, 38 per cent of respondents said they had “never” made such a change, while 5 per cent – equivalent to 2.3 million people – said they had done so more than ten years ago. The average answer to this question was 1.7 years ago.