A horizontal cover image featuring an orange background. The title ‘A guide to annuity essentials for paraplanners: part two’ appears in large text on right of the image. Left of centre, there’s a headshot of Rob Powell of Standard Life. The words ‘Online: 1pm on 14 May 2025’ appear at the top right of half of the image above the title.

Remember our Assembly on annuity essentials back in March?

Over the course of one lunch-hour, Andy Powell from Standard Life walked us through the basics of annuities – how they work, the differences between pension and purchased life annuities, and the kinds of options available like inflation protection and guarantee periods.

Now it’s time to take things further.

Join us at 1pm on Wednesday 14 May 2025 for the second of Andy’s annuity two-part series, when the annuities expert returns to talk more about how annuities can feature as part of your clients’ retirement income strategies.

For instance, among the practical planning tips that go beyond the basics, are things like:

With annuity rates remaining attractive, this is the ideal moment to brush up on an option that’s enjoying a bit of a renaissance in retirement planning.

So whether you’re already recommending annuities regularly, or just getting to grips with them, this session will offer practical approaches you can use right away.

Plus there’s one hour’s worth of CPD available.

Fancy coming along? Save your spot now.

If you don’t feel all that confident about annuities, you’re not alone.

Once the default choice of guaranteed income in retirement for generations of UK pension savers, for a whole bunch of reasons, annuities had been falling out of favour for year and years.

Why annuities matter again

Higher interest rates and inflation have led to a revival of interest in securing certainty of income in retirement. 

The trouble is that an emerging generation of paraplanners – and a sizeable chunk of the more established paraplanning population – had barely any recent experience of annuities.

So we invited Andy Powell from Standard Life to join us to explain:

Tailoring annuities to client needs

During this Assembly, Andy explores the different ways annuities can be designed to meet different requirements. For instance:

Andy also covers newer developments like fixed-term annuities and platform-based solutions that let clients combine secure income with investment flexibility without splitting pension assets across different providers.

For paraplanners, perhaps one of the most valuable takeaways is understanding enhanced terms where, in contrast to other insurance products, health conditions actually increase and not decrease income.

This practical session will give you paraplanners useful knowledge to help clients weigh up their retirement income options. So why not watch or listen now?

A special tax year end Assembly combining expert insights and Chat-powered Q&A.

Coming just a week after the Budget statement on 6 March, a little over a fortnight before tax year end, and while the Finance Bill from last October’s statement is still making its way through Parliament, it was the ideal time to tune in to what you really need to know as the tax year hits its paraplanning peak.

To help, we gathered together a stellar panel of experts to share their knowledge and know-how: Les Cameron from M&G Wealth, James Jones-Tinsley of Barnett Waddingham and Transact’s Brian Radbone. (Scottish Widows’s Tom Coughlan, was due to join us but technical gremlins proved too much of an obstacle.)

Expect a lunch-hour discussion laden with lashings of insights on allowances, reliefs and exemptions spanning pensions, ISAs, capital gains tax and inheritance tax (and everything in between).

Is advicetech getting any better at helping advice professionals deliver a great advice experience to clients? Or are we destined for a future in which we struggle to get platforms, services and software to work the way we really want?

That’s what platforms, pensions and investments consultancy, the lang cat, wondered. That’s why they spoke to paraplanners, advisers and administrators for their latest report – A Fragmented World – published late last month.

The report combines findings from in-depth interviews with nearly 40 financial planning firms with responses to a comprehensive online survey completed by scores of financial advice professionals.

But will the lang cat’s findings chime with your own day-to-day experience of advicetech?

To find out, watch the replay of this online Assembly where the lang cat’s insight director, Steve Nelson, shares what they learned – and what it means for paraplanners and your use of advicetech in future.

From now on, there’s no need to visit Crowdcast to save your spot at an online Assembly. Just tap ‘Book event’ and follow the step-by-step instructions.

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Many paraplanners may never have worked on an annuity or have less experience since pension freedoms came in. In this session, we cover the basics of guaranteed income.

Learning objectives

During the session we covered…