Client Objectives (My Brief)
This client came to see me with 7 different pensions. He was a few months away from his 65th birthday and ready to retire. He’d received a lot of documents from the pensions companies but didn’t really know what to do with it all.
His objective was to cover his monthly outgoings in retirement and then have enough to be able to enjoy life in the next 10-15 years. He wanted someone to work out his best options.
The Services and Work I Carried Out
As part of finding out about client details, I discovered that he had high blood pressure and diabetes. This made it worthwhile getting quotes for something called an enhanced annuity. An annuity provides you with a guaranteed income for the rest of your life. In this case I managed to get a 16% increase in the amount he would have received on a normal annuity. This made it a much better option and one worth considering more seriously as a means of providing the guaranteed income they wanted.
I then looked at this and other possible retirement options to see which would produce the best outcome to cover their regular day-to-day expenditure. To do this I produced a number of cash-flow statements. These showed their possible pension income including contributions from their State pensions compared to their expenditure.
As well as the financial elements, I also looked at other things they should consider as part of the decision, like death benefits for his wife, and children, optimising their income tax position, and getting the balance between taking guaranteed income, cash in the bank and more flexible pension income.
Results and Value to the Client
The outcome of the analysis and advice was that the client achieved a good level of guaranteed income to cover their day-to-day expenditure needs whilst also keeping some of the pensions to be used more flexibly and to pay for the ‘extras’ in life and that will provide better death benefits for his wife and children.