I have come to a conclusion after 42 years in pensions that freedom from pensions works for some but only some. David Brown has started a company called Freedom to make it easier to make sense of their savings and have what Bec Wilson calls an epic retirement.
I have spoken to Mark a couple of times and to Damian Stancombe many times more. Their vision is liberal and it fills a gap for those who want an epic retirement that they have control of. Damian and Bec met when he was in Australia on his first retirement and I suspect an answer for many who otherwise would use an adviser is behind this post.
There are a lot of comments from people who I have worked with over the past 20 years. Laurie Edmonds is one
There is a school of thought that people can be educated to be financially up to using the products that have been designed for them. Laurie hopes that everyone can be educated to work out pensions as they have been developed.
Laurie and I disagree on this, I am quite sure that people who are getting on in life are not up to being educated and younger people don’t see the point. Most people do not want to be financially expert enough to work out how to build an epic retirement while the few who do will find Damian and David’s work interesting and maybe of use (without the latter the business has no value).
Richard Smith knows that what most people want is not freedom from pensions but pensions that give them freedom
There’s a lot to read here but the gist is in the titles. Pension Dashboards will open the doors to those who want to do pensions for themselves (though most of us will still rely on defaults to pay us a retirement income from our pots for however long we are alive).
I don’t think Pension Dashboards will give us am epic retirement but they’ll take us a step along the path to a sound one.
Other views on Freedom
There are a lot of other comments. Chris Wagstaff that despite their being nearly £4bn in funded pensions there isn’t enough to pay the pensions we’d all like to have.
Here David sounds like Torsten Bell, I would agree if I didn’t see the products of tomorrow on the way and looking like the pensions schemes we started out with in the middle of the last century
Josef Pilger wants us to check out what has happened in the Nordics and Holland. The Pension Bill is certainly looking towards the Nordic and Dutch model, a pension rather than a wealth market,
Wealth management -attendants moving chairs on the Titanic ?
Damian Stancombe thinks the problem with advisers promoting the solution as an investment matter.
Clever people like to do clever things so focus on investment strategies and longevity hedges. It’s akin to the deck attendant on the Titanic moving the chairs around before it hit the iceberg. Freedom is about moving the iceberg
I fear that many in pensions make money from managing our investments and little from administrating it. The investment consultants may be attendants on the Titanic but I am not sure whether we can do without wealth managers for those going for the epic retirement, perhaps Damian and David Brown are not quite as one on the value of them!
Various view of freedom and some from Freedom
Here we have a fair representation of the views around freedom and we have yet to hear Mark and Damian’s Freedom solution. I hope that this account of what’s been hosted is helpful.
Is Freedom needed for an epic retirement?
My conclusion is that there are a limited number of people who want an epic retirement and they will want to feel reassured by the deckchair arrangement of wealth management as well as a payroll solution of the cashflow management and payroll arrangements which looks to be the business of Freedom.
David’s important observation is that people are afraid to spend their money and need retirement pay done for them. If he works out a way for us to do it with Freedom, I think he will have achieved something.
I think he is on to something if he offers better administration of payments but he’ll need to work out how to work with those who can’t cope with freedom.
