Last updated at 15:02, Friday, 22 June 2012

They are subjects that many of us try to put to the back of our minds – money matters for another day.

Jan Wright

But there’s no denying that looking forward is becoming increasingly important as people plan their future finances amid the continuing fragile cash climate and what state they may leave bank balances years down the line.

How we fund ourselves during retirement and, sadly, what arrangements we make following our deaths are two of the issues that should not be avoided.

Both are under the spotlight this week – with a Carlisle legal firm warning that taking the cheap option on wills could cost you and your loved ones thousands of pounds and a national report warning that the retirement savings industry is in the “last chance saloon”.

On the wills front, a partner at Cartmell Shepherd says she has witnessed first-hand the devastating consequences of using unqualified firms who offer cut-price will-writing and estate administration services.

Jan Wright specialises in wills, trusts, inheritance and probate. She says all of these services should be treated with caution.

She said: “The fact is you don’t need a qualification to write a will, and nor is there regulation to say who can and can’t offer these services.

“It has become a market where people see they can make some money, and all too often it is at the expense of the client.

“You get what you pay for, and too often I meet people who have gone for the cheap option and ended up with documents that are full of mistakes.

“It can sometimes cost thousands of pounds to get them fixed, whereas by spending a little more initially to get their will prepared professionally they could have saved themselves a lot of money and heartache.”

Ms Wright’s comments come in the wake of proposals by the Legal Services Board, the independent body responsible for overseeing the regulation of lawyers in England and Wales, to introduce regulation for will-writing and estate administration.

An investigation by the board found “systemic problems” with the services delivered by many different types of provider and found examples of where beneficiaries of those who had died were left with problems because of the will of the deceased.

On matters of retirement, meanwhile, a report has claimed people’s hostility towards the retirement savings industry is fuelling Britain’s lack of a savings culture.

The Centre for Policy Studies argues that the industry has only a brief window of opportunity to redeem its reputation and must simplify its services and make them more transparent to better suit people’s needs.

The report’s author, pensions analyst Michael Johnson, proposes radically overhauling the savings system by setting up “super Isa” accounts, an enhanced form of today’s Isa which could be given to every newborn child and linked to their NI number.

This would give everyone a single “seamless” savings vehicle from cradle to retirement, the report says.

Other reforms proposed in Put the Saver First would include setting up an industry-wide service to consolidate pension pots for defined contribution pension schemes. It says the market for annuities, which people buy when they retire and set the size of their pensions for life, should also be simplified with the setting up of a single “clearing house” in which all annuity providers should participate.

The Government should step in to take “far more assertive action” if significant progress is not made by the industry to revive its own reputation by 2017, the report said.

It said that regulators in their current form are not properly equipped to help such innovation.

The report comes ahead of the Government’s landmark scheme to automatically enrol workers into pensions, starting with larger firms this autumn, in a bid to tackle the retirement saving crisis.

Official figures recently showed that the proportion of people in a workplace pension has fallen below half for the first time in at least 15 years. Some 48 per cent of employees are in a scheme, compared with 55 per cent when the records began in 1997, the Office for National Statistics said.

The Association of British Insurers criticised the report, describing many of its recommendations as “impractical, unworkable or unlikely to achieve their intended outcomes”.

National Association of Pension Funds policy director Darren Philp said: “There is a lack of confidence in pensions and this needs to be tackled urgently if we are to address the pensions savings crisis that the UK is experiencing.

“The pensions industry has recently been doing a lot of work to get people engaged with pensions and to improve trust and confidence.”

First published at 14:07, Friday, 22 June 2012
Published by http://www.cumberlandnews.co.uk