Barrie & Hibbert Calls for New Approach to Retirement Planning

Barrie & Hibbert has launched the Retirement Portfolio Planner to support advisers and product manufacturers in solving complex financial issues that arise in retirement planning.

Barrie & Hibbert, the award winning modelling provider, today announced the launch of the Retirement Portfolio Planner (RPP), a unique analysis and planning solution specifically designed to support advisers and product manufacturers to solve the complex issues that arise in financial planning for retirement.

The Retirement Portfolio Planner (RPP) is an analysis and planning tool which insurers and advisers will find indispensable for identifying and demonstrating the best investment strategies for individuals at the point of retirement. Comprising a unique engine specifically configured to support advisers and product manufacturers, the RPP can be used to measure, assess and compare risk across different asset classes, products and product combinations. This allows users to identify the likely performance of different retirement investment options, and to arrive at a solution tailored to the retirement objectives and risk preferences of the individual.

Barrie & Hibbert believes that the current methods and toolsets used in the accumulation phase of financial planning are not well suited to the increasingly sophisticated range of retirement products. In traditional processes risk and reward is often described in generic and relative terms, using simple measures of volatility, or terms such as 'cautious' or 'balanced'. This type of information means very little to a customer soon to retire who is more concerned with their long-term income level or the money he is interested in leaving to his dependants.

In order to effectively communicate the risks in long-term retirement income products, and therefore demonstrate the value in products designed to mitigate these risks, providers and advisers need to develop effective means of measuring and presenting risks consistently across a range of different retirement income products and strategies. The ease at which the RPP can generate illustrations and detailed analysis of this is therefore a significant development in helping insurers and advisers communicate risk and benefits to consumers. This is perhaps one of its greatest strengths.

Phil Mowbray, Head of Product Risk at Barrie & Hibbert, says: 'Given the complexities of the evolving retirement market, and the inherent path-dependent nature of most retirement products, our clients are increasingly demanding that more sophisticated modelling techniques are used to capture and communicate the various risk factors.

Building on our existing modelling suite we have developed the RPP in response to that demand. This tool will particularly help advisers and product manufactures understand and articulate the impact of particular product or investment strategies and therefore support a robust retirement planning process.'

Further details of the Barrie and Hibbert RPP can be found at www.barrhibb.com/rpp.
-ENDS-
For further information, contact:
Sharon McLaughlin / Lisa McEwan
McLaughlin Gibson Communications Ltd
Tel: +44 (0) 141 440 6797
Email: sharon@mgcomms.com / lisa@mgcomms.com

Notes for editors
Founded in 1995, Barrie & Hibbert are leaders in modelling financial market risk, providing stochastic models, economic scenarios and risk management products to insurance and financial services groups around the world. Currently there are offices in Edinburgh, London, New York and Hong Kong.

Globally over $10 trillion of insurance and pension assets and liabilities are now managed with the support of our products and services.

For further information visit: www.barrhibb.com

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