The government pension reforms that were implemented in April this year have now come into full effect. There have been many changes to the way in which individuals can access and use their pension savings. One of the biggest is that anyone aged 55 or over can access their pension however they choose. Pension holders can now withdraw part or all of their pension pot as a cash lump sum if they wish to do so. For pensions providers, this has caused numerous problems. Providers have had to change service propositions and the products they sell resulting in a huge amount of extra work.<\/p>\n
Customers naturally want to get the best value<\/strong> from their pension savings and with the new changes they have more choices and options available to them. Pension savers are no longer obligated to take out an annuity. Naturally this has resulted in a slow down for annuity applications but has created a huge volume of new work as pension providers handle enquiries from existing and new customers trying to get the best value option.<\/p>\n These changes has resulted in a huge increase in workload for back office<\/strong> operations of pension providers. Customers have a lot of questions about how the changes will affect their retirement plans and pensions and it’s up to the providers to be able to answer them.<\/p>\n Ask yourself…<\/strong><\/p>\n When a change occurs, it can be easy for an operation to become overwhelmed.<\/strong> High volumes of new business, training, compliance and servicing existing customers create a perfect storm that for many operations proves hard to weather. It’s in this pressured environment when a business is most susceptible to losing competitive advantage through poor service delivery.<\/p>\n\t No pressure, no diamonds.<\/p>\n\n