From your first pension payment to the claim your family may one day make
Big financial decisions rarely arrive at convenient moments. Whether you are weighing up drawdown against an annuity, tracking down a pension you last saw in 2004, or ringing us after losing someone, you will get a straight answer from a person who has time for the question.
Retirement is no longer a single date when work stops and a pension starts. People wind down gradually, take a lump sum to clear a mortgage, keep some money invested for another twenty years, or release equity from a home to help a child onto the ladder. Each of those routes has consequences for tax, for how long your money lasts, and for what you leave behind.
Our job is to lay those consequences out clearly before you commit. That starts with free tools β pension calculators, drawdown projections and retirement income estimates you can use without giving us your details. It continues with Targeted Support, where we help people in similar circumstances understand the options that typically suit them. And where a decision genuinely needs regulated advice, such as transferring a defined benefit pension, we will tell you so rather than let you walk into it unadvised.
Turning a pot into an income
Compare flexible drawdown with the certainty of an annuity, and see how each affects tax, longevity and what you pass on.
Bring it all together
We help trace forgotten pensions and check for guarantees before you move anything, so consolidating never costs you more than it saves.
Using your home wisely
Lifetime and retirement interest-only mortgages explained honestly, including the effect on inheritance and future care costs.
One call, one team
A named contact guides you through a claim, handles the paperwork burden and stays with you until it is settled.
There is no single number, but there are useful benchmarks. Industry research suggests a single person needs roughly Β£31,300 a year for a moderate retirement lifestyle and around Β£43,100 for a comfortable one, with couples needing less each because costs are shared. The State Pension covers a meaningful slice of that, so the real question is the gap between it and the life you want. Our free pension calculator shows your projected income based on what you have saved so far, and how much difference an extra Β£50 or Β£100 a month would make between now and your retirement date.
The State Pension age is scheduled to rise to 67 and then to 68, and the age at which you can normally access a private pension is also increasing to 57. If you had planned to stop work at a particular birthday, a shift of one or two years changes both how long you are saving and how long your money needs to last. It is worth checking your State Pension forecast, confirming your normal minimum pension age, and modelling a bridging period if you intend to retire before the state payments begin. We can walk through those numbers with you.
Call us and we will do as much of the rest as we can. You do not need policy numbers, paperwork or legal documents to start β a name and a date of birth is usually enough for us to begin. A named member of our bereavement team will stay with your case from that first call, explain what we genuinely need and when, and chase third parties on your behalf. We paid 98.4% of protection claims last year and settle most straightforward life claims within days of receiving what we need. There is no charge for any of this support.
Free, no obligation, and no pressure to buy anything
Bring your questions, your old paperwork and your worries. We will help you see where you stand and what your realistic options are β even if the answer is that you are already doing the right thing.
