Most financial advisers are more than aware of the huge opportunity presented by pension transfers. The pensions market is huge and ‘sticky’ with many people having never had their pensions reviewed or moved to a more suitable provider.

If you are an adviser who does not actively seek pension transfer business then there may be a huge amount of untapped business in your existing client bank, but for those that do, there are massive marketing opportunities surrounding pension transfers.

Barely a day goes by when pensions are not in the news and prospects are often more than willing to have a pension review after hearing the (often bad) news about underperforming pension funds, pension closures, a lack of pension funding generally or significant stock market movements.

In our experience, most people have never had a proper pension review and instead focus their energies on other (less complicated) areas of their financial affairs. This is clearly a massive opportunity as for many people, the value of their pensions will be central to the standard of living they enjoy for many years in retirement.

In fact, we find that many people do not even know the value of their current pensions and what their pension might give them as an income when they come to retire. Even for the clients that do keep an active eye on their pensions, almost none fully understand the complexities of the current pension system in the UK and what options are open and available to them.

This is where financial advice is so important and where advisers can add real value. Even showing a client how much they have invested in their pensions, how it has been performing and what this may mean for their eventual retirement income can be of huge value to clients.

Some financial advisers are unwilling to do much pension transfer business due to these very complexities, or due to the time it takes to complete pension transfer business or due to the perceived compliance risks involved. This has been further compounded following the FSA’s thematic review of pension switching.

This FSA review highlighted major concerns that some advisers were not giving suitable advice and not documenting their advice adequately. Click to read this review and for more on this subject see our ‘The Current Environment’ page.

The other aspect to consider is the number of underperforming pension funds out there. Forward thinking financial planners have embraced new technology, wraps, asset allocation investment strategies and a risk rated approach to investing and can add real value to their clients by offering this philosophy in place of underperforming pension contracts that offer little flexibility and little scope for long term growth. The Pension Performance Review Process is ideally suited to this type of adviser who wants to provide a high quality service to their clients and believes their clients deserve better when it comes to their pensions.

Pension reviews and pension transfers remain an important area of financial advice today and are a central offering from the best financial planners in the business. Finding an efficient, effective and compliant tool to offer clients a complete pension review has been challenging. This is why the Pension Performance Review Process has been developed and why the advisers using it write so much pension transfer business.

The Pension Performance Review Process can help advisers build recurring income streams through increasing funds under management. This process has seen the value of some businesses offering the Pension Performance Review increase massively as inherent value is built up.

 The Next Step: The Current Environment.