Billy Burrows has parted company with Annuity Line, the non-advised annuity specialist he joined in August last year, in the wake of Budget changes that are likely to dramatically reduce sales of single annuities.
Mr Burrows confirmed his departure on Twitter on Friday, when he announced he would be setting up his own consultancy business called Retirement Intelligence.
He wrote: “Annuity Line were good to me [and] I wish them well but time to move on again... New consultancy business is called Retirement Intelligence.”
His tenure as business development director for the firm had lasted just 10 months, after he joined the company in August of last year from Better Retirement Group, the company which acquired his own William Burrows Annuities business in 2010.
Reports suggest Annuity Line is undertaking a restructuring following the Budget changes earlier this year, which could have reduced annuity sales by as much as 50 per cent. The firm is said to have already made a number of redundancies in its administration team, with more likely to be announced in the coming months.
The firm would not be the first to announce departures in the wake of the Budget overhaul. MGM Advantage announced that it is shedding 80 staff and launching a “radical new proposition” after admitting it “would be madness” to ignore the radical pension changes.
A spokesperson for MGM told FTAdviser that the group does not believe the annuity market will pick up again to pre-Budget levels following the chancellor’s now infamous statement that ‘no one will have to buy an annuity’.
Other firms have witnessed a severe slowdown in sales since March, especially off the back of a widespread decision to extend cancellation periods that saw sales from as early as the first weeks of February cancelled.
Prudential’s first quarter annuity sales were down 35 per cent, Legal and General’s sales fell 40 per cent, and Just Retirement and Partnership pointed to a halving of sales in April and May.
