CompaniesMay 3 2016

Aviva’s Lawson tells advisers: Let us educate your clients

twitter-iconfacebook-iconlinkedin-iconmail-iconprint-icon
Search supported by
Aviva’s Lawson tells advisers: Let us educate your clients

John Lawson, head of policy for retirement solutions at Aviva, has said employee benefits consultants and advisers need to move on from acting as a “gatekeeper” and allow providers to step in and educate workers.

Speaking to FTAdviser, he said Aviva acquires many pension schemes through third parties, such as employee benefits consultants, but “sometimes [the advisers] are a bit over-protective of that relationship”.

Mr Lawson said providers are afraid to encroach on employee benefit consultants’ and advisers’ market, and as a result are not educating members of the workforce about automatic enrolment into pensions.

“I think we need to have the ability to communicate with the end member of those schemes, just about financial planning, because we have the resources as big firms to produce that material,” Mr Lawson said.

“Maybe consultancy firms will produce that material themselves - some of them are producing some great tools and material educational materials - so it will depend on the individual broker or intermediary how they want to manage that relationship, but I think we shouldn’t allow niceties to get in the way of educating people.”

“We need to get to the point where we can have that sort of three way relationship”

Mr Lawson argued there needs to be an agreement on who is going to educate the scheme members.

He said: “I think we are in a transition period where everyone is waking up to the value of communicating with the scheme member.

“We wouldn’t want to disturb that relationship (between adviser and employer) under any circumstance. The intermediaries introduce business to us, so why would bite the hand that feeds us? Equally we need to come to an agreement with an intermediary that somebody should be educating those scheme members.”

Debbie Falvey, defined contribution proposition leader at Aon Employee Benefits, said she has seen providers wanting to bypass the adviser/employer relationship and engage directly with employers and trustees.

She said: “Direct engagement with members might be appropriate where the employer is not engaged with member support, and the providers do have resources and tools that can be useful.

”Equally consultancy firms have well developed tools and propositions to support members that their clients may choose to use.”

Andrew Whiteley, independent financial adviser at Provisio Chartered Financial Planners, said it was a healthy thing to open up a working relationship between the three parties.

He said: “I think they’ve [employee benefits consultants] had a bit of closed ship for a long time and not done the best they can. There has been some quite cosy relationships between employee benefits consultants and fund managers.”

ruth.gillbe@ft.com