But 7IM’s Yeates says the industry has not kept up with what clients need.
“Retirees need flexibility in the current landscape and that can only be achieved if advisers have that same level of flexibility in the products available,” he says.
Brewin Dolphin’s Silvester agrees there has not been a great deal of innovation in the markets to help consumers with the challenges of coming up to retirement.
But he argues it has been difficult to innovate solutions since pensions freedoms came into force due to the flexibility that was introduced.
Reflecting on 7IM’s latest product, Silvester says: “As far as helping an adviser educate their customers, I think this is probably going to be the first in a number of similar innovations.
“All good ideas generally tend to be copied and then moved on. I think 7IM have been extremely brave, and built something that really does help to meet a real gap in the marketplace.”
Others are hesitant as to whether more options are needed and whether providers should instead look to make their services more intuitive.
"We need to get to something where annuity and drawdown allocation works together," Ormston says. "At the moment, we're saying the best way to get value and then the highest return is by separating these two products out and every attempt to merge the two is coming at a cost.
"It's something that can be worked through and that needs to be worked through."
amy.austin@ft.com
