A director of an IFP corporate member said staff at his firm have worked like 'slaves' to get ready for the pension reforms, saying the pace of change was 'bonkers'.
David Flory, director of strategic accounts at Aegon UK, spoke to guests at the IFP Paraplanning Conference 2015 this morning and also criticised plans for a secondary annuities market.

He described this as "a chance for someone to get ripped off again".

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He said: "It sounds lovely as a sound bite but when you start lifting the bonnet and consider it... it's crazy, it really is crazy and does cause me great concern".

He added: "Let's hope that gets canned quickly."

He said the pension changes were "really good" for clients but to introduce it in 13 months from the point of the first announcement was "bonkers" and they had been working like "slaves".

This process had been "brutal and painful", he said.

In his presentation on "who pressed the manic button", he said there had been "pretty dramatic" changes in recent times.

Those he highlighted were RDR, auto-enrolment, tPR review of pricing, capital adequacy, solvency II, Mifid II and pension reforms.

The pace of change has "really been quite dramatic", he said.

To back up his point on the scale of change he cited the fact that since 2000 there had been 491 pension legislation amendments.

He said for the financial services sector it had appeared that "the end of the world has happened every year, it feels like armageddon is coming twice in some years."

The last few years has been a case of evolution but more recent times have been revolutionary, he said.

As he looked to the future of Financial Planning, he said the retirement market is expected to grow to over £1trillion in the next 10 years, according to a Spence Johnson report, which he cited. This also predicted particular growth in mass affluent clients.

He said: "I think there's a huge scope for advice in this area and it will be really interesting to see what business models come out."

New advice models are likely to emerge, he added.

He discussed the increasing prevalence of tablet and smartphone devices for using the internet and the Google algorithm change dubbed 'mobilegeddon'.

The search engine altered the way it searches on mobile devices, with sites that are not optimised for mobile use ranked more lowly.

He said finance firms needed to move with the times on this.

He said: "It's really important to see how we engage people through that vehicle."

He also touched on savings, saying the UK needs to develop a better culture in this regard.

Developing countries are much better at saving because they are having wealth for the first time, he said, based on the Aegon Retirement Readiness Index.

Mr Flory also hailed the delegates, saying: "This room represents the future."

Pointing to the younger average age of the Preplanning profession he joked that he was used to addressing "pale, male and frail" normally.

He said: "I'm significantly above average age and that's fantastic."