PensionsMay 4 2017

Billy Burrows launches retirement income website

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Billy Burrows launches retirement income website

Billy Burrows has launched a website to help clients and financial advisers keep up to date with developments in the retirement income market.

Called retirement-iq.co.uk, the website will also help advisers and clients get access to the best annuity and drawdown solutions. 

According to Mr Burrows, the "centrepiece" of the new site will be a section called the Retirement Income Marketplace. 

Here, advisers and clients can compare and contrast the product offerings from the leading annuity and drawdown providers.

Mr Burrows said: "It is now more than two years since pension freedoms but many people still do not understand the key issues and risks and not enough people are shopping around for the best appropriate solutions.

Advisers have a free independent research tool and individual clients can do their own research before seeking financial advice. Billy Burrows

"This means many retirees could lose out on thousands of pounds of retirement income because they are either choosing the wrong income options, paying too much in charges or have inappropriate investment strategies."

There are also several free retirement income guides and a range of annuity and drawdown calculators and charts.

According to Mr Burrows, the tool will help advisers meet their regulatory requirements to give advice, based on a "comprehensive and fair analysis of the market".

He added: "Until I created the retirement income marketplace there was nowhere to compare and contrast the many different annuity and drawdown solutions.

"Now advisers have a free independent research tool and individual clients can do their own research before seeking financial advice."

In April 2014, former Chancellor George Osborne famously announced there was no more need for anyone to be forced into buying an annuity, and ushered in the pensions freedom and choice regime from April 2015.

This allowed people from 55 to be able to take their pots either as a cash lump sum, or to enter drawdown, or to buy an annuity, or have the flexibility to do some or all of the above options, depending on the size of the pot and their needs for income in retirement.

In April, occupational pensions consultancy The Pensions Portal, also launched a free website for consumers, called moneyalive.co.uk.

This is designed to help the more than 320,000 people who retire each year with a defined contribution pension pot.

According to Andy Kirby, managing director of The Pensions Portal, the site can be white labelled and licensed by employers and pension schemes and has been designed to integrate with and compliment existing processes.

The site can also be configured to provide detailed analytics of individual user journeys. It can also ask users questions and record their replies - providing data which be useful for risk management and compliance.

simoney.kyriakou@ft.com