The growing need for a 'later life adviser party'

And this is where the potential bad news could hit – let’s be honest, even at this very late stage no-one truly knows how the result is going to play out. We are perhaps pretty certain that no one party will win a majority and therefore we’re into the realms of coalition government again and who can bring enough to the mix in order to get a Queen’s speech passed.

I saw an interesting interview recently with Gus O’Donnell, now a Lord, who was the most senior civil servant at the time of the 2010 Coalition negotiations and effectively in charge of getting the parties to agree. He said that, in comparison with what is coming over the horizon post-2015 Election, five years ago was a cake-walk with effectively just two parties (the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats) serious about working together.

2015, he said, was likely to be much different with any number of parties either wanting (or needing) to have a say in negotiations in order to be able to put together a plan and a Queen’s Speech. The result could be much greater level of uncertainty, which will have its own impact, and much to-ing and fro-ing as the leading lights jockey for power. Given the nature of what is happening to UK politics and the fragmentation of our former two-party system we should perhaps see this Election as a true sign of things to come.

In terms of the campaign itself, and from a later life advice perspective, I have been rather disappointed that the needs of retirees and those in later life have not been debated as fully as they should have been. While the campaign has focused extensively on the housing/rental markets, the economy, the NHS, immigration, austerity, Budget cuts and to a lesser extent, education, there has not really been a point where the issue of providing for later life, the growing number of older people in the country, and how the UK goes about delivering in this area, has been debated fully.

This could unfortunately be an Election campaign which is remembered more for Russell Brand and West Ham/Aston Villa football allegiances rather than serious questions about later life standards of living, the fullness or otherwise of pension pots, long-term care needs, State support or otherwise – the list goes on.

In a way perhaps the introduction of the pension freedoms at the start of April took away any momentum from such a debate happening. Perhaps in the mind of the media the story of pension provision, how to grow retirement income, and what to do with it once you retire, was all done and dusted by the second week of April. When in fact there are much bigger issues to be discussed around the future landscape for older people in terms of what they are likely to receive from the State going forward and how they will fund the growing number of responsibilities they have.

In that sense, perhaps it is up to the later life advice community post-Election to ensure those sorts of issues are placed firmly back on the agenda and are not overlooked. Tied up in this is how we continue to promote the positives and the necessity now for many more people to secure financial advice leading up to, and into, retirement because the options available are now far more than they were pre-April 6th. It is about positioning advisers within the post-Guidance structure and emphasising the need for the State to sign-post individuals onto advice following their Guidance sessions.

Looking at the collective thrust of this, and the need for later life advisers to band together on these issues and to promote their services, I’m not sure we have any particular body or institution out there in the wider marketplace that is currently doing this. Maybe it is time to look at the specialist nature of later life advice and the advisers who provide it, and recognise that having a collective voice would help us secure the action we require and would help publicise and market the services we provide. It appears to me that there is no better time to formulate the ‘later life adviser party’ which would work fully on our behalf and begin to strongly push this type of message.

I fear that the catch-all adviser representatives that we currently have are not equipped to do this and it would be better to have specialist representation which is completely dedicated to this sector. Then there would be no doubting who was working on advisers’ behalf and we could begin to put all our resources and collective will behind them to get the outcomes we want for our sector and our clients. Any organisation that could do this would certainly get my vote.