Beaufort Financials’ Chairman, Simon Goldthorpe, was recently featured in the press to discuss the YouGov research that his company recently commissioned.

The research was conducted in order to understand consumer awareness among over 50s of the rules and the propensity to seek financial advice in respect of retirement.

The research uncovered some interesting and worrying results:

Awareness

It is encouraging to see that the majority of people surveyed are aware of pension freedoms, however the results show that only 63% are informed about the rules. Another concerning statistic here is that around 4.5 million adults are not aware of pension freedoms.

Gender Gap

Beaufort Financials’ YouGov research has presented a disturbing difference in knowledge of pension freedoms between men and women, exposing the need to educate and raise awareness.

Taking Financial Advice

These results display another disappointing gap between men and women, this time stating who is more likely to seek financial advice about their retirement. Women are said to be significantly less likely to seek financial advice.Correlation Between Early Retirement and Seeking Advice

Unfortunately, the results show that even when early retirement is a possibility for individuals, this does not encourage that many more people to seek financial advice.

The overarching result of this research suggests the need for the financial industry to invest more time in communicating the value of advice, especially in the years where people are leading up to retirement. Financial advice can help people to retire successfully, and pension freedoms can be used to people’s advantages to enable them to potentially retire early or accomplish more in the next stage of their lives.

Infographics sourced from New Model Advisor article.