Legal & General’s retirement arm has acquired a pensions tracing company through which it will provide its own pensions dashboard to its customers.
In an effort to provide consumers with an easy way to track down their lost pots and plan for retirement, L&G Retail Retirement today announced (August 12) it had bought MyFutureNow, a service which plugs basic personal data and employment details into a pension database to provide up to date information on a consumer’s pension.
The MyFutureNow platform will be offered to L&G customers of working age as well as those in retirement, and will also become available to advisers who want to use the programme for their clients.
According to L&G, MyFutureNow can be used either as a tracing service to find lost pots or as a way of creating a single dashboard view on an individual’s pension savings portfolio.
A similar service, the pensions dashboard, is set to be launched by the government but Chris Knight, chief executive of L&G Retail Retirement, said although L&G supported the initiative, the “reality” was that it “may be years before full coverage is realised”.
The government hopes its dashboard will ensure people throughout the UK have easy access to key information about what pensions they have, who manages them and what they are worth.
The government confirmed in December last year it would introduce multiple pension dashboards, with the first one, developed by the Money and Pensions Service, expected to launch later this year.
Mr Knight added: “Wherever they are in their retirement journey, from beginning to save for retirement to planning retirement income solutions, customers need the tools and guidance to make informed decisions about the most suitable options for their personal circumstances, lifestyle and retirement goals.”
Managing director at L&G Retail Retirement Income, Emma Byron, said making the right financial decisions at the point of retirement was often “complicated” and that the onus was “very much on the individual” to build their own retirement strategy.
She said: “Advice, tools and guidance are crucial. We believe the addition of MyFutureNow’s platform will help us in our mission to support consumers at this critical stage in life.”
L&G plans to make the service available throughout its defined contribution business by the end of this year, expanding it through its retirement income business in the first quarter of 2020.
Alan Browne, founder of MyFutureNow, said: “We are delighted to be joining the L&G group and excited about the prospect of helping their current and future customers to better understand and prepare for their retirement.
“For us, it’s always been about helping people to make the most informed and in time decisions possible, and we believe we have found a partner in L&G that is very much aligned with that customer-centric approach.”
Last week it emerged a retiree received a windfall of nearly £133,000 after a chance encounter with an adviser led him to a state pension pot he didn’t know existed.
He had mistakenly assumed he was not entitled to a state pension after the government did not respond to his pension forms.
imogen.tew@ft.com
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