A national firm of independent financial advisers (IFA’s), the Lighthouse Group, has announced the launch of a specialist pension and annuity advice service to assist its IFA’s on important retirement issues. The new service will enable advisers to refer pension cases to in-house specialists at Lighthouse on a fee basis or commission split basis. Full liability for the accuracy of the advice will be taken by Lighthouse. This is the first of what will be a series of new services being launched under the Lighthouse brand to support their advisers.
The group says that this service allows IFAs to retain control of their clients, with a no cross-selling guarantee being put in place. The areas of specialist advice include money purchase pension (personal pension) reviews, final salary pension (defined benefit) reviews, retirement options, pension annuities and pensions and divorce.
Their pensions service head Mark Wilson stated that this is a great opportunity for Lighthouse and its advisers to broaden and strengthen their comprehensive offering to clients, allowing them to offer a far wider financial planning service supplemented with specialist advice where appropriate. Pension funding really is a critical issue at the moment, and in a retirement market with constantly evolving options it is important to ensure that advisers have the specialist support required. It is no longer just a case of checking annuity quotes for the best annuity rates when it comes to someone’s retirement. There are other options.
