Advisers hold the key to the future of truly free pensions

Shri Krishnansen, Chief Commercial Officer at WealthOS, outlines how advisers will determine whether Pension Freedoms truly deliver for the next generation of retirees. With inheritance tax changes looming and Defined Contribution pensions now dominant, he warns that legacy systems cannot support modern, flexible retirement planning and highlights the questions advisers must ask providers to ensure clients receive secure, adaptable solutions.

2026 will be another important year for pensions advice, with Defined Contribution (DC) pensions becoming the dominant source of retirement income for even more people beginning to draw from their pensions. With less of a cushion from Defined Benefit (DB) pensions, these people are entering retirement with greater responsibility than many who have drawn down before them.  

This is a moment the 2015 Pension Freedoms set in motion. And there’s more change coming too: from April 2027, the lifting of inheritance tax exemption on pensions will demand even greater rigour in how pensions are structured and accessed. Possible reforms to the tax-free lump sum (perish the thought) would require even more adaptability across the system.

Yet, much of the UK’s pension system still belongs to the annuity era, creating a growing mismatch between what clients need and what many providers can deliver. Linear journeys, manual processes, siloed data and legacy tech that came part and parcel of a time when more restrictive access to pensions were prolific cannot support the seamless, personalised experiences modern retirees expect. 

For advisers, this is no longer a peripheral issue. It’s central to your ability to deliver safe, flexible retirement strategies. You can’t build modern retirement plans on outdated systems. Comparing providers by performance, charges and fund choice is no longer enough; advisers must now assess whether a provider can actually deliver secure, compliant and adaptable retirement journeys for a generation far more reliant on DC schemes and Pension Freedoms. 

This creates headaches, but also places real influence in advisers’ hands. By recommending providers with the operational readiness required for the next decade, you’re accelerating the reform clients urgently need.

To support this, WealthOS has developed an operational readiness checklist – here are the key questions every adviser should now be asking:

1. Does your provider offer the full range of flexible options enabled by Pension Freedoms? 

Not every provider supports the full suite of flexible choices pension holders need, from mixing drawdown mechanisms to accessing multiple investment pathways. This inflexibility often forces advisers into workarounds, creating suboptimal and administratively burdensome retirement plans. 

2. Can the provider show your clients their options – or are they still sending PDFs?

Clients don’t just need choices; they need to see what those choices mean. Interactive tools and modelling make conversations clearer, faster and more confident. If a provider is still reliant on static PDFs, generic information and slow manual processes, the burden falls back on you, creating extra explanation, extra admin and slower decisions.

3. Is the provider you’re recommending really omnichannel – or just ‘digital with a phone number’?

Clients expect to move effortlessly between app, web, phone and adviser meetings,  but most providers still can’t support this. This matters because advisers now serve five generations of clients, each with different digital expectations and accessibility needs. Weak channel design frustrates tech-savvy clients and fails vulnerable or less-digital ones. And when channels break, advisers are left to fix the fallout.

4. Are broken transfers draining your time – and your client’s patience?

Transfers still take weeks, sometimes months – an embarrassing reality in a world of real-time payments. This inefficiency erodes trust, with clients assuming advisers are the bottleneck. Poor transfer infrastructure creates unnecessary work and anxiety on both sides.

5. Is the provider using AI to personalise retirement – or just tidy operations?

AI has moved fast from buzzword to a must-have tool in a pension provider’s tech stack. It can transform retirement planning with personalised guidance, clearer projections, and better-timed nudges. But many providers are only using it behind the scenes, doing little to improve the client experience.

6. Can your systems integrate?

Advisers already juggle multiple platforms – often seven or more, rising to 13 for complex cases.* If providers can’t integrate cleanly, advisers are left rekeying data, stitching information together manually, and managing avoidable risk. Providers fit for the next decade must integrate smoothly into the wider advice ecosystem.

7. Are your clients – and your business – protected from modern fraud and operational risk?

Pension Freedoms increased both transaction volume and complexity, exposing vulnerabilities legacy systems were never built to handle. Weak administration increases the risk of errors, delays and fraud, and when something goes wrong, clients come to advisers first. 

The message is clear: advisers can only deliver truly flexible retirement when providers modernise. Those who upgrade will shape the next decade of pensions. Those who don’t will simply fall out of advisers’ recommendation sets, and out of relevance… much like compulsory annuitisation did a decade ago.

By Shri Krishnansen, Chief Commercial Officer at WealthOS