---------------

Open Retirement Courses

In-House Retirement Courses

Senior Executive Retirement Courses

Talking Retirement

Mid-Life Planning

 

 

 

NEWS & SPECIAL OFFERS

HSBC fined £10 million pounds for mis-selling investment policies to fund care.

 

Retirement Education Services have been just as shocked as other organisations at the revelations on TV and in the newspapers (Daily Mail 6/12/11) concerning the inappropriate products offered to the elderly to fund care home fees.

 

RES MD, Tony Wheeler, commented that we have used NHFA for many years with regard to advice concerning the rules and regulations on care fees in Nursing Homes both Local Authority and commercially run.  Their literature was always of a high standard and comprehensive in its coverage.

 

We were nervous when HSBC took them over in 2005 and since that time have cautioned those who attended our courses that they had become owned by a High Street bank which may exert more pressure on their advisers so far as financial products for care was concerned.  How right we were.

 

Our policy of never accepting payment directly or by commissions for any organisation that we work with (or suggest to participants) has been fully endorsed by this dreadful affair.

 

We have already reviewed the assistance that we received from them in our self-teaching packages and will decide shortly which organisation we can trust to work with us going forward.

 

We are anxious at present to ensure that the information we give continues to be without bias towards the sale of investment products.

 

Unfortunately even the present site recommended by the Government has admitted on its website to receiving fees for business placed with experts that help them, e.g Solicitors and IFA’s.

 

 

DEFAULT RETIREMENT AGE

 

The abolition of the default retirement age committed to by the coalition could have a catastrophic impact on retirement training & planning course providers says Tony Wheeler MD of Retirement Education Services Ltd.

 

Up to now HR or Pension Managers have been able to gauge based on age criteria how many staff would need to be budgeted for with a retirement training course year on year.  These HR personnel might normally offer attendance to retirees say two or three years before their retirement age of 65.

 

Going forward employees will be able to decide their own retirement age simply giving their line manager or HR Depts their contractual notice period.  This in most cases would be only 4 weeks or a calendar month.

 

To provide a pre-retirement training course within four weeks of a person announcing they are going to retire would be virtually impossible on an in-house basis and may require staff to be placed solely on ‘open’ courses by commercial providers such as ourselves given that we have the space to take them.

 

In the present recession it is most unlikely that larger Employers would wish to increase their spend on retirement planning which would be inevitable compared to the savings in-house events offer.

 

Even if a course could be engineered within four weeks there is little time for that employee’s partner to seek to be released by their employer with so little notice given.

 

However, far worse is that the benefit of attending immediately prior to retiring turns the process into retirement ‘panic’ not retirement planning.  Long serving employees need and deserve to have a good time to consider the many aspects that will be raised by retirement course providers.

 

Examples of this would be to learn the pros and cons of deferring a state pension or paying additional voluntary contributions.  Other situations could concern whether a divorced woman in her late fifties might be financially penalized if she were to re-marry before state pension age.

 

It will be hugely frustrating for employees retiring after state pension age to learn that their savings or state pensions could have been greater had they taken various actions several years prior to retirement day. 

 

Their tax position could also be jeopardized if they take a state pension when continuing to work.  They could fall foul of the age allowance trap.

 

2011 marks our Silver Anniversary of providing retirement training for individuals and employers alike. Our objective is to make it a year to remember for those clients who have helped us grow and to new clients wishing to sample our services.

28th & 29th September 2010 - Employee Benefits Show in London.  Thanks to all the people we met at the above venue.

Open Course dates and venues 2011/2012

If you are interested in attending an open course, or sending an employee on one, please contact us even if the dates and venues below do not suit

Date

Venue

Course

 

 

 

27th - 28th Jan

Wallingford

2 day pre-retirement course

17th - 18th Feb

Newcastle

2 day pre-retirement course

5-6th May

Wakefield

2 day pre-retirement course

2nd June

Bury St. Edmunds

1 day pre-retirement seminar

7-8 th July

Wallingford

2 day pre-retirement course

8-10th October

Cricklade, Swindon

Senior Executive Weekend

17th – 18th Nov

Wallingford

2 day pre-retirement course

26th – 27th Jan 2012

Wallingford

2 day pre-retirement course

1/1/2010 Interesting Year ahead for Retirement Planning

"We are in for an interesting year" said Managing Director Tony Wheeler when interviewed recently regarding retirement planning issues.

"We had a relatively in-experienced Pensions Minister Yvette Cooper oversee the implementation of the Pensions Act 2007 which involved the most major changes to the state pension since 1948. Since the election we now have an equally inexperienced new Pensions Minister in Iain Duncan Smith.

Countless women who retired before April 5th this year without full state pensions are likely to vent their anger at the Government when they learn that those reaching state pension age after 6th April may receive far more generous pensions.

For example a woman reaching state pension age on 4th April 2010 with a 20 year national insurance record will receive a pension in today’s terms of about £49 per week. A woman whose state pension age fall two days later on 6th April would receive £63.50 per week for the same 20 years national insurance record. If they both live to be 80, then £15,080 more will have been won or lost for the sake of having been born perhaps premature or later than due!! By 90 the figure rises to £22,620.

These figures ignore the state pension increasing each year which would exaggerate the imbalance substantially more."

 

1/10/09 HMS Belfast hosts Talking Retirement Online launch

Leading providers of pre retirement training, Oxfordshire-based Retirement Education Services Ltd. recently caught the attention of a number of well-known major employers at the launch of their web-based self-teaching programme “Talking Retirement Online”, an online retirement training programme.
A prestigious launch event was held on board HMS Belfast near Tower Bridge in London and attended by representatives of employers such as GlaxoSmithKline, Harrods and Sainsbury’s. Managing Director of RES, Tony Wheeler, said “Talking Retirement Online is the culmination of over 20 years of experience offering comprehensive, independent advice to would-be retirees. We are pleased and proud to have generated a high level of interest from some of the best-known organisations in the U.K.
A draw was held at the end of the day providing a year’s free licence for the product. This was won by the aptly named Andrew Luck of Thomson Reuters.

HMS Belfast

Being internet-based, “Talking Retirement Online” can be made available to a company’s entire workforce through purchase of an inexpensive, annual user license, offering huge cost savings when compared with traditional face-to-face, printed or pre-recorded training. Employees are free to learn at their own pace and to re-visit subjects as often as necessary. There is the additional advantage that course material can be updated rapidly in the light of changes to legislation and benefit structures, so that users always have access to the latest facts.
The product launch is well-timed, as recession-hit employers seek to trim overhead costs and possibly bring forward retirement dates. “Talking Retirement Online” enables caring employers to provide high-quality pre-retirement education at what can be less than £1 per person.
For more information, contact Retirement Education Services Ltd. on 01491-833696 or go to www.res-ltd.net or www.talking-retirement.co.uk, where a free limited trial of the product is available.

 

 

 

 

 


click here to email us