Can more access to advice improve retirement outcomes?

Speaking with ifa’s sister brand Super Review, the general manager at Chant West, Ian Fryer, said the impending Quality of Advice Review (QAR) reforms that will allow institutions to provide financial advice could make it more accessible and improve Australia’s retirement standard.

Fryer said these changes will allow Australians to access the level of advice they need to better understand their options when approaching retirement.

“Ultimately, we want to have something where everyone who’s retiring can get some help, either a little or a lot, from their super funds,” he said.

“So they can have structure moving into retirement with investments and drawdown rates, which are going to work for them and help them get the most of all that super that they saved years for.”

Speaking on the needs of Australians, Fryer said some clients don’t need ongoing financial advice and being able to access the help they need when they need it will benefit many people.

“We need to work out a way that advice can be delivered in smaller chunks and, indeed, the majority of people probably don’t need that $5,000 SOA,” he said.

“They probably just need some simple help, maybe a couple of times through their working life, but also at the point of retirement. Retirement is the key time that someone needs advice.”

Discussing the potential benefits of super funds giving advice, Fryer said it isn’t necessary to do a full fact find of the clients’ financial history and that they could work with the information the client has already provided to them.

“There can be some key things that they need to ask and based on those key things, they can come up with a recommendation and do it in a really cost-effective way,” he said.

Fryer added that if funds were able to access external consumer data on their clients, they would be able to present a potential plan to them based on their specific needs, simplifying the process further.

“Funds could actually gather information about their clients and come up with a plan, saying, ‘You don’t have to tell us anything. Based on what we know about you this is our ideal structure for you in retirement’, and the client can say yes or no,” he explained.

Discussing Australia’s current world standing in relation to retirement, Fryer said this is an important step that could set the nation up to be a world leader.

“I think it’s going to take five years or more to get all this sorted but you know when we do, we may well be leading the world at that time,” he said.

“We may well be leading the world at the moment in accumulation, we’re a long way behind in retirement.

“But what we’re talking about here with advice and also retirement products, we can actually go a long way to setting our system up, not just really good in accumulation, but gold standard also in retirement and that’s where we need to move to definitely.”