This article, which features in the May edition of Citywire’s Income+ magazine, explores the 45+ consumer’s outlook on their future retirement and on using financial advice and guidance.

We cover consumers concerns, and what savings, investment and pension provisions they have to live on in retirement.  One year on from pension freedoms, with greater choice requiring retirees to take ownership of their capital growth and retirement income, we measure awareness and experience of government-backed guidance services and willingness to pay for professional, regulated advice.

Guidance services are set for more changes following recent Budget announcements, and the Financial Conduct Authority has announced it is putting pensions at the top of its 2016/17 business plan.  With this in mind we ask, how big is the ‘advice gap’ of those with a pension but not willing to pay for advice when approaching retirement, and what are the implications of this?

All data contained in the article is taken from a Harris 24 survey conducted on 19th – 20th April 2016 amongst 1,055 nationally representative people in the UK aged 45+.