Consumer Duty - Retirement Income Advice

[caroline.brennan]

• Overview
• Workflow
• Opportunities (Optional)
• Case Benchmarks (Optional)
• Case Template
• Conditional Workflow
• Consumer Duty Document Note Template
• Opportunity (Optional)
• Annuity Quotes via The Exchange
• Other research
• Implementing the Annuity or Drawdown on Xplan
• Adding Drawdown/Income reviews
• Reporting
• Dashboards

Overview

 In this article, we’ll describe how you can create a comprehensive process for dealing with clients who are looking to start taking or review their retirement income.

The process includes using The Exchange to gather annuity illustrations, implementing products in Xplan, adding drawdown reviews and reporting.

Recording your retirement income process is a key aspect of Consumer Duty and the recent FCA thematic review on Retirement Income has highlighted important themes and objectives. 

If your advisers are correctly following a robust process it has a number of benefits - for you and for those clients.  It can help your team carry out the right checks for those clients and drive regulatory reporting.  In addition, it’s one of the ways you can evidence that you have processes in place to manage the service you provide to your clients at key stages in their lives.

Let's start with looking at the workflow.

Workflow

• Opportunities (Optional)

Not available to "Essentials only" clients (is available to Essentials+)

We recommend linking the Case template you create to an Opportunity. As you add an opportunity to your client the case is created and activated. You can ensure that your tasks update the opportunity at appropriate points in the process to ensure the opportunity progresses across the kanban board. This ensures you can easily see what you need to do next on each client

• Case Benchmarks (Optional)

Not available to "Essentials only" clients (is available to Essentials+)

You need to create a list of all of the items you expect an adviser to have created as part of their advice process. This should not be an exhaustive list of everything possible but should include mandatory items and could include non mandatory i.e. optional items. 

In our process we have only included a Consumer duty note as mandatory - leaving other items as optional to be added to the case as and if required. We have also included an optional factfind benchmark to illustrate how these can be set.

If you don’t have any case benchmarks at this stage then this step can be omitted.

• Case Template

Not available to "Essentials only" clients (is available to Essentials+)

We recommend using a Case template to create this workflow. Even if you don’t have any case benchmarks yet which you wish to introduce there may be a point in the future when this becomes necessary. Creating a case template now ensures that updating and improving your process is easier.

Link the created case benchmark set to your Case Template

• Conditional Workflow

Custom workflows not available to "Essentials only" clients (is available to Essentials+)

This is a standard retirement income advice workflow. If you would like help in building this on your site or would like a download of the file to import into your site please contact your account manager.

• Consumer Duty Document Note Template

Create a document note template which you can use to record your confirmation that items have been considered. This can be used to match against a case benchmark. It can be as comprehensive as you require for your own compliance.

• Opportunity (Optional)

Create a new Opportunity Template and link your workflow to the template setting other options to suit your business.

Annuity Quotes via The Exchange

• Annuity quotes can be obtained directly from the exchange.
• It is now possible for you to send your clients a link so that they can update their medical information directly into The Exchange. This will enable you to easily perform an enhanced annuity quotation. How to do this can be found here.
• Within our Product Roadmap is an item to build a new integration with The Exchange for this feature.

Other research

• Other research can be completed using your standard processes.
• Within the workflow we suggest using a range of options to ensure that you are meeting your Consumer Duty requirements. Not all may be applicable to each client. You can include these as a checklist within the task if you prefer
• Investment Research & Analysis
• Use of O&M Profiler integration
• Use of Xtools
• Use of Exchange integration for annuity quote and Equity Release
• External research for Lifetime mortgages
• Long Term Care needs
• Alternative Options

Implementing the Annuity or Drawdown on Xplan

• Drawdown

A Drawdown policy should be added to the retirement funds area in Xplan.

Include any crystallisation events such as taking tax free cash as both a crystallisation and a withdrawal.

Selecting Add NBE will save the record and take you to the New Business Events area to complete your NBE process and then allow you to lodge to CommPay to create your estimate. This ensures it is all linked together.

The recommended product may have been created via an integration with the quotation provider in which case all you should need to do is change the policy to Active and then Add NBE as above.

• Annuity

An Annuity policy should be added via the Annuity/Retirement Incomes area in Xplan.

Select Add NBE which will save the record and take you to the New Business Events area to complete your NBE process and then allow you to lodge to CommPay to create your estimate. This ensures it is all linked together.

The recommended product may have been created via an integration with the quotation provider in which case all you should need to do is change the policy to Active and then Add NBE as above.

Adding Drawdown/Income reviews

A client may already have an annual review with you but including a Triennial drawdown review may create a good opportunity to ensure that the client is still happy with their levels of drawdown. This is an opportunity to check if drawdown is still the right solution for them as annuity rates improve as clients age.

You can create a specific review type for this drawdown review along with any linked workflow.

Speak to your Account Manager if you are an Essentials firm as we may need to do part of this for you.

Reporting

Custom data extracts (Xports) not available to "Essentials only" clients (is available to Essentials+)

• You can create various reports from Xplan to monitor that advisers are adhering to your guidance for At Retirement advice - such as showing you are considering multiple options to meet your clients’ needs

• Please talk to us if you require help in setting up your reporting for Consumer Duty

Dashboards

• You can create a dashboard to show you specifically which drawdown reviews which are coming up - assuming you have created them as specific reviews - see above

• You can add widgets to a new tab which is focussing only on your At retirement activity

• If you use Opportunities you can see at a glance where all your at retirement opportunities are by using the existing filter options

If you would like any further help with setting up or adapting your Retirement Income Advice process please contact us via your account manager.