Should new pensions guidance staff have experience and knowledge of pensions? Well, applicants will need to demonstrate knowledge to apply for a role manning the phones - but perhaps not to work on the face-to-face channel.
The discrepancy is revealed in job advertisements which have gone live today as The Pensions Advisory Service and Citizens Advice Bureau, the chosen providers of the Treasury’s guidance guarantee, begin their recruitment drive.
As revealed in October, CAB will be delivering the face-to-face element of the guidance, while Tpas will be running the telephone and web-chat service.
Both organisations have admitted they will need to recruit additional staff to cope with the influx of enquiries come 6 April, when the at-retirement reforms kick in.
Tpas’ job advert for ‘assistant technical specialists’ detailed that candidates must have experience of working in or with pensions, understanding a range of different pension types and be up to date on legislation.
“You need to be hungry to learn more and will ideally have or be working towards being APMI qualified or a similar professional qualification such as the Chartered Insurance Institute,” the listing added.
However, recently published job adverts for CAB ‘pension guidance guarantee agents’, who will be the first point of contact for consumer, are told only that “some knowledge” on pensions issues would be “an advantage”.
The CAB separately posted a brief for ‘pension guidance caseworkers’ who would deal with more complicated pension issues that the agents could not handle, which stated the role requires “a good foundation knowledge of pensions law and practice”.
Salaries range from £18,000 to £24,000 for a CAB guidance agent, to £22,000 to £30,000 for CAB caseworkers and “in the region of £30,000” for Tpas specialists with “an opportunity to join a generous Civil Service pension arrangement”.
Malcolm McLean, senior consultant at Barnett Waddingham, told FTAdviser that having previously been chief executive of Tpas, staff need to have a degree of knowledge to help them as people often call without really knowing what question about pensions they are asking.
“Scripts are OK for just annuities, but this is a whole raft of new pensions options and tax treatments coming in from April; it’s becoming a complicated area.”
Alan Higham, retirement director at Fidelity Worldwide Investment, disagreed, stating that there seemed to be a disproportionate focus on the experience point and arguing that it is often easier to train good communicators in pensions, rather than trying to turn pensions specialists into good guides.
“Tpas is based in London, so may be more able to recruit pension specialists, while CAB may struggle to find them in all the far flung regions of the British Isles.
“The vast majority of guidance conversations will start at an extremely basic level, so I really find all this sniping to be very dispiriting.”
Mike Morrison, head of pensions technical at AJ Bell, commented that realistically the guidance sessions are going to be not much more than a decision tree.
“Tpas have a good reputation and are lucky to have people that are good at guiding consumers through their options, while I get the feeling that CAB often have a more downmarket audience and the face to face sessions might have to deal with more curveball questions.”
In September, Tpas’s current chief executive Michelle Cracknell, said that it had received several applications from recently unemployed former employees at annuity providers and this could create a “virtuous circle”.
She added that the organisation would welcome people with five or more years of pensions industry experience, which is half that required for existing advisers at Tpas.
peter.walker@ft.com
