Because I am involved in setting up a CDC , I guess I am a “collectivist”. Like the majority of working people, I would like a pension paid to me from a date decided by me. I will take interest in what I can take as tax-free cash. I will want protection for my spouse if I die before her (I hope she wants the same for me).

But I know many people who regard much more control and  engagement in their later life financial management as important. I used to sell flexibility over a regular income and was excited when twelve years ago, I was told I had freedom instead of a pension.

I spent the first 10 years as a self-employed financial adviser and at that time I was a child of Thatcher (1983-1985)

We still have the breath of Margaret Thatcher lightening the fires of individualism. Individual preference points not to pensions but wealth.

As I have grown closer to retirement, I have found that pensions have become for me, more important than the flexibility of “freedom”.

Whereas wealth is a personal thing, a pension is something most people receive alongside others. The most obvious example is the state pension but many in public service get a workplace pension paid from taxes and many older people have rights to defined benefit plans from private companies.

For me the future of pensions is in collectivism. The future is in non-guaranteed pensions that invest with an infinite time horizon and a belief that for every one of us who die another will be born. I’m talking “CDC”, but workplace pensions will from next year be paying by default a retirement income. If experience at retirement is like experience of people in “accumulation”, these defaults will become a kind of “flex and fix” pension.

I expect to see a bifurcation between pensions and wealth management with Defined Contribution workplace schemes that aren’t collective increasingly moving towards wealth management for workers who do not want the default. It will be interesting to see how many choose not to go the pension route.

Although the Pensions Schemes Act requires DC schemes to deliver a guided retirement income through to death, there appear to be opportunities to tailor what savers get as wealth.

What does wealth mean?

Wealth to some might be a pot of £10,000; while to others wealth might be something achieved when net worth is one million pounds.

Collective DC pensions and default guided retirement will offer little choice.

By contrast, there are infinite varieties of wealth management to meet the needs of those for whom a £10k pot is a windfall to millionaires for whom the state pension is an irrelevance.

Many wealthy people will have sufficient to consider all pensions unnecessary. Many have swapped their DB pension rights for a pot of money in a self-invested personal pension.

Once we have arrived at a point where a high proportion of workplace pensions are collective, then I suspect the bifurcation will be such that DC retirement saving will cease to be confused with pensions and will be referred to as “retirement wealth” – or some derivative.

I don’t dismiss the DC saving scheme.  But choice will become simpler – especially when pots are displayed by the pension dashboard as income.  Will you take a flexible “wealth pot ” or a simple “pension”.

One of the features of wealth management is choice. People will be able to choose the funds and individual stocks that form their retirement wealth.

There will also be a bifurcation in investment. The collective fund will be institutional, the individual wealth fund will offer retail funds with choice and capacity to change

The collective funds will focus on the tenets of the Mansion House accord and ESG. While wealth management will focus on metrics for an individual’s view of “value for money”.

Finally, there will be bifurcation between financial planning based on wealth and pension planning based on an individual and the individual’s loved one’s retirement income.

There is likely to be a need for advice in the wealth market but very little need for it where pension is the aim. While wealth points to diversity and choice, pensions deliver quite the opposite.

In truth, when I was an adviser, I found I had very little to say to those who wanted to talk with me about pensions as retirement income. I understand why the modern IFA and wealth manager will want to focus on the “wealthy”. I expect most of the people who read this article are wealthy but I leave you with this thought.

Most people will never have the privilege of a financial adviser. The future of pensions is for the many workers with need of more pension than the state offers. Those who financial advisers serve are to most people “wealthy”!