Into the Valley of Death rode the 300...

The number immediately conjures up images of heavily outnumbered Spartans standing firm in the face of overwhelming odds. And spartan is probably not a bad word to sum up the help they may receive.

As we know pension guidance guarantee agents are being recruited on salaries of between £18,000 and £24,000 a year.

So they will be somewhere on a par with customer advisers in your local phone shop, though I suspect rather less knowledgeable about their product than staff in an Apple store.

Agents will require good numerical skills, good customer service experience, be strong team players and be able to communicate complex facts to a broad range of people.

Desirable attributes – which include some knowledge of pensions issues – are a willingness to travel, possibly with overnight stays, and working evenings and weekends.

That seems to be asking rather a lot for £18,000 to £24,000 a year when the national average wage is £26,500.

Pension guidance guarantee caseworkers have been offered £22,000 to £30,000.

While there will no doubt be some committed workers and a few gems, these people are clearly going to have far less pension knowledge than you and me.

So if this system is to work there must be a clear system of referring questions and issues up the line – and beyond the confines of Pension Wise to qualified advisers. Though my understanding is that offers of pro bono help from some advisers have been snubbed.

The key question initially is how many people will use the 300 agents? Well, the government has suggested 300,000 a year. This would be around 1,150 a day which would be about five meetings or calls a worker a day allowing for holidays.

But life does not work like that.

Pension Wise is likely to be deluged in the first few months and at certain times of the year.

Pension Wise is likely to be deluged in the first few months and at certain times of the year

There has been much speculation of how many people have put off retirement waiting for the pension reforms; some have suggested there could be a million or more waiting.

What we do know is how commercial organisations such as Nationwide and Tesco Bank have failed to cope when deluged with interest from customers after they launched best-buy products. And they were able to throw more than 300 experienced workers at the problem.

Government organisations such as HM Revenue & Customs have at times proved farcical in their inability to answer phones and handle problems.

My fear is that the initial period could be chaotic, with people unable to get through on phone lines or to book face-to-face meetings.

And that creates a danger that Pension Wise brand could be tarnished from the start.

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DWP fails to do its homework

Pensions are the topic of the moment. Hargreaves Lansdown tweaked the government’s tail with the result of a Freedom of Information request showing that up to two million pensioners retiring by 2020 will not get the full flat-rate pension.

The department for work and pensions appeared upset at suggestions by Hargreaves’ head of pensions research Tom McPhail that “many people will get less than they may expect”.

If the DWP doubts this then its officials may wish to canvas some real people. When I revealed the huge numbers who would not be qualifying for the full flat-rate pension in July last year, the response from Daily Mail readers was astonishing.

Many were clearly under the misapprehension that they would be getting a £155 a week flat rate pension.

The if, buts and perhaps’s of the legislation had bypassed them and had not been explained clearly enough by those responsible.

I would have thought the DWP would have appreciated the repetition of this story – if only to make it less likely that people will be disappointed at retirement.

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Pension Wise pound foolish

I was recently contacted by a former IFA who retired just a couple of years ago with some queries about his pension.

I am not going to go into details here, but what it did bring home to me is how much is happening so fast.

Here is someone who was intimately involved in the world of financial advice and has very sensibly put his feet up and left financial issues behind.

Except he wants to get the most from his pension.

Admittedly, his pension arrangements are more complex than the everyday person’s are likely to be.

But I would be astonished if his query, involving administration, could have been addressed at the basic level by Pension Wise.

As it turned out, his pension will not be affected at all by the changes in April. However, he was unlikely to know that without going to a third party for information.