John Deacon, head of corporate solutions, said: “Individuals in DC schemes now have more choice than ever on how and when they take their retirement savings. It’s essential that employers are offering a means for employees to really engage with their retirement planning throughout their working life and take advantage of their options. This preparation cannot be left until they approach retirement if people are to make informed decisions and retire with an income that meets their needs.”The platform incorporates a comprehensive range of features to help employees. From the time an individual joins an employer, up to the time they retire, employees can:

  • Keep up to date with their current pensions savings and review and amend their investment choices and contribution rates;
  • Project what their fund could look like in the future and model different retirement scenarios;
  • Engage in risk planning questionnaires to assess both their attitude to risk and their income needs in retirement;
  • Calculate what their retirement income could be based on current contributions, retirement age and other income sources such as the state pension and savings; and
  • Illustrate the form of that retirement income – whether it be a single lump sum (with the taxation implications fully illustrated) flexi-access drawdown over a number of years, or an annuity income for life.

Buck’s pension platform is intuitive and simple for employees to use. It can be seamlessly integrated into an employer’s existing online environment and white-labelled. It has been built to respond to the device it’s being viewed on, meaning employees can access their finances from smartphones and tablets, as well as desktops.David Piltz, head of trustee services, said: “Pensions have always been associated as being complicated. The dashboard is designed to make it easy for employees by giving them all of their finances in one place and a range of tools to aid their understanding and planning at whatever stage of the journey they are in.“Once retiring employees have made the choice on what they want to do with their pension, whether that’s keep it invested, take drawdown or purchase an annuity, or a mixture, they can implement their decision through the portal. And from here, our pension administration team can implement the new flexibilities.”If you want to find out more about our pensions platform and how it can help you and your employees, contact us at TrusteeServices@xerox.com or call 0800 066 5433.