Carolyn Jones did not start her financial services career thinking she wanted to be in pensions.
In fact, she went through a phase of wanting to become a lawyer, influenced by the popular 80s and 90s US TV legal drama LA Law.
She also toyed with the idea of becoming a nuclear physicist – all this while she was studying for her applied physics degree at Manchester Metropolitan University.
But in her career path to becoming head of pensions products at Fidelity she has done things she did not associate with working in pensions.
Ms Jones said: “I have done big systems projects. I have worked on big mergers and acquisitions; looking at how you bring two groups of employees together with very different benefit structures.
“I have met government officials and presented at parliament. I do media work and some filming, but, I am in pensions.”
Following the departure of Fidelity’s head of pensions policy Richard Parkin last year, Ms Jones is now also carrying out external-facing pensions policy duties.
This means she gets to work closely with the regulator.
Her team sits centrally within Fidelity’s three main distribution channels: direct to customer channel, the workplace and the fund network channels, which focuses on advised relationships.
Ms Jones says the dual oversight she has of policy and products puts Fidelity in a "fairly unique position" of being able to look ahead at how regulation will impact the sector and vice versa.
She added: “We are quite different to other organisations in that we see policy and product as an actual fit-together. Where we are sat is, if we can get close to the regulator and to policy, and influence that policy and understand in plenty of time what the policy direction is, we are better placed to design for the future.
“Equally, because we have a global reach and a lot of retirement experience in countries we operate in, we can bring that global view and look for similar experiences to help regulators understand the consequences of their actions.”
One such consequence has come about as a result of pension freedoms; it has created a larger group of unengaged individuals who are not paying enough into their pensions.
This, Ms Jones said, prompted a change in the way Fidelity is trying to engage with customers directly or through its adviser channel.
She said: “In the past, pensions were really about the accumulation phase and the engagement strategies, and the products or services people wanted were really about: am I paying enough, have I chosen the right investment or should I be in self-select and am I making the most of my tax relief?
“That is where the focus of service offerings was, because that is all you could influence. A small minority had drawdown, but really you are all targeting annuity. Auto-enrolment just brought more unengaged people into that environment.
“And then freedoms came along, which in a way contradicted that, because you have this unengaged population who then need to be engaged enough to make the most of the freedoms.
“And that’s completely pivoted our focus. Now it has to be on what do people need to make the most of freedoms. Pensions freedoms is great, but helping people achieve those outcomes is hard.”
Three groups that fall heavily under that unengaged banner are women, millennials and the self-employed.
The company is looking at how it can engage with women differently.
“I read something recently, that women are mis-sold to more than men, because men look for facts and women like a personal touch,” Ms Jones added.
“At Fidelity we are focused on, how do we get women?' Because they make the financial decisions in the majority of households, women know where the money is being spent, where the risks are, where the debt is and it is important we reflect that.”
Ms Jones says the pensions dashboard has the potential to do a lot of good by drawing in the unengaged, particularly millennials, but cautions that it will only be a success if people can access it.
She added: “If you put the dashboard on a pensions website, or a Pension Wise website, you will serve an audience but you will not engage those millennials. If we can make dashboard data available in a stealthy way, it’s almost not related to a pensions thought, it is related to something else they are doing, and it will be more powerful.”
The FCA recently launched its non-workplace pensions review to see whether there are issues around competition and consumer protection.
Often, self-invested personal pensions (Sipps) are considered the default pension choice for many self-employed people, who are seen as self-aware and engaged with what is going into it.
But Ms Jones said it is not necessarily the case that someone with a Sipp is engaged with their pension.
She added: “If someone is truly engaged and making their decisions, people put a product lense over this saying, 'If you are in a Sipp you are self-invested and by nature you are engaged.' Well, a lot of Sipps are just personal pensions, so one does not [necessarily] follow the other.
“What we are cautious about is saying a product label dictates a behaviour.”
Ima Jackson-Obot is a features writer at Financial Adviser
Carolyn Jones's Career highlights:
August 2016 – present: Head of pensions product, Fidelity International
2013 – 2016: Head of corporate proposition, pension and workplace savings, Fidelity Worldwide Investment
2011 – 2013: Associate director, DC pensions and workplace proposition, Fidelity Worldwide Investment
2006 – 2011: Senior manager, Fidelity International
2000 – 2006: Management consultant, PwC
