Retirement Systems
Retirement Systems Blog
10 December 2018
We’ve been putting up the Christmas decorations at the Retirement System’s offices and it’s the office Christmas party next week – there has even been talk of a Secret Santa. It’s important to make some time for these kinds of things at this time of year. But that got me thinking; how do we make the time – are we really less busy.
I started looking at our real-time annuity quote volumes for December over the last few years and a pattern started to emerge; December appears to account for around 4% of the annual quote volumes – around half of what would be expected. That is understandable; I don’t imagine we are the only ones putting up decorations and preparing for festive outings. But is there a pattern throughout the year?
Looking at the data between 2014 and now, there are consistently two peaks; one in March and another in October/November. The first of these is understandable – getting everything in order before the end of the financial year, but the end of year peak is a little more difficult to explain.
I can only imagine that getting things sorted by the end of the year is the real driver (keeping December free for the festivities of course). But how can this information help IFAs? Knowing the busiest time of year (and the quietest) is useful information for any firm, but as the end of year rush seems to be quite arbitrary, it also lets firms concentrate on campaigning for the other times of year. Many people associate retirements with holidays – could this be a way of getting people to plan their retirement over the quieter summer months?
But all of this is just a distraction from the important jobs; now where’s that tinsel?
Phil Dawson is the development director of Retirement Systems and has more than 20 years of experience in financial software solutions.
Retirement Systems Limited has been providing whole of market annuity quotes since 2002 and hold unprecedented rates data on a number of retirement products. For more information email info@retirementsystems.co.uk
