Pension Service Review 2024

The study measured how satisfied the advisers are with their preferred providers and identified where expectations were being met by cross-matching ranked importance with ranked satisfaction.

• Personal pensions, SIPPs and drawdown plans remain the most popular pension product options. But compared with the previous study there has been a renewed interest in other decumulation options, such as annuities and hybrid solutions.
• On average, advisers are placing business with 4.25 providers, an increase from 2022 when the average provider count was 3.9.
• On average, advisers are utilising 3.84 different pension products, an increase from 2022 when the average count was 3.2.
• In 2023, Royal London retains its top position as the most recommended pension provider ahead of Aviva Life & Pensions and Prudential.
• Royal London achieved the greatest number of top three positions – 30% – followed by Aviva and Quilter with 24% and 18% respectively.
• In the ranked order of importance, Product and proposition and Pension freedom servicing are once again the top two categories for advisers. All other categories received slightly lower scores than last time, but Existing business administration increased two ranked positions from fifth to third and Online services by one ranked position from sixth to fifth.
• Industry satisfaction has declined for all categories by an average of 8%, and for some by as much as 11%. This paints a picture of challenged service levels and general dissatisfaction with pension providers.
• InvestAcc achieved the top score for five of the seven categories of satisfaction. Royal London, Quilter and 7IM were also well represented in the top three for various categories,
• A cross-match of ranked unweighted satisfaction with ranked importance shows that the industry is failing to meet expectations for five out of the seven categories of service, although there is a good correlation for four of the categories where performance is just one or two percentage points short. Most concerning is Existing business administration, which is ranked as the third most important category but achieved the lowest unweighted performance scores.