Advice essential for pandemic-panicked retirement savers

It is a dangerous game trying to time the markets, but quality advice should mean clients’ retirement goals are less likely to be disrupted due to coronavirus, says Jamie Smith, one of our financial advisers.
Before the current pandemic hit, we undertook research into the retirement trends of consumers, asking questions around how and when people would like to retire as well as what their main retirement concerns were.We found that the average age people would like to retire is 63, while the age they expected to retire was 65. Also, only a third (33%) said they had planned to stop work completely when they retire, with the majority (59%) looking to work either part-time or ramp-up to retirement in phases.

But for many, even these modest plans will have been derailed by the coronavirus pandemic. In such an unpredictable crisis, it is easy to be distracted by the market volatility over the past few months and fixated only on the short term. In fear of taking a hit to their hard-earned savings, many may have made knee-jerk reactions that could see them selling out of the market at its lowest point.

Jamie Smith says the most important thing is to not make any panicked, rash decisions without talking to an adviser and that it is the adviser’s responsibility to remind clients that pension savings are a long-term investment. For those who have had good quality advice, and who had been prepared to face such a market downturn, we would not expect their plans to change drastically.

Read the full article on Professional Adviser.