Money Marketing Retirement Summit

Busy morning at the Retirement Summit on June 8th.

I was the first speaker. The topic was “Can product Innovation Close the Retirement Advice Gap?“. In my opinion the answer is yes. But not if the innovators are relying on sales through most financial advisers. Previous attempts such as guaranteed unit-linked propositions failed to gain traction. Reasons given by the sixty or so advisers present included: “Too expensive” “Too complicated” “Not enough time to get my head around them” and “We don’t need any new products”  Understandable but a bit depressing.

Next up was a panel session where I joined Gill Cardy and Henry Blunt in a session on “The Succession Dilemma” and “How Retiring Advisers Can Protect Their Firms” Excellent debate and very good to hear Gill talk about her experiences selling her own business.

Busy evening as well. Visit to The Royal Academy for the Summer Exhibition. Happily in advance of it opening to the general public so not too crowded. We thought it was the best for a long time. Dinner afterwards at Zedel. As good as ever.