By Anton Padmasiri Posted on 15.05.2025
It’s been a decade since pension freedoms reshaped retirement in the UK. The idea was powerful: More control for savers, more flexibility in how they access their money, and a move away from one-size-fits-all retirement.
But 10 years in, the experience for most retirees is still fractured and frustrating.
Product innovation hasn’t kept up with policy expectations. While the regulations changed, the delivery didn’t. Too many providers still rely on outdated infrastructure that makes simple things like consolidating pensions or adjusting income slow, complex, and inaccessible. And most retirees, who aren’t advised, are left navigating this alone.
The real missed opportunity: We haven’t built a retirement experience that works for how people live today. What’s needed is simple:
- A single digital destination where people can see all their pensions
- Tools to structure income from flexible drawdown and guaranteed products like annuities
- Clear, contextual information to support decision-making
- Seamless digital journeys, with support available across channels when needed
This isn’t about one provider doing everything. A SIPP platform might handle drawdown and an insurer might underwrite the annuity, but the innovation is in connecting those dots—giving people the freedom to build a retirement income plan that combines flexibility and certainty without the operational burden.
The technology to make this vision a reality is only just arriving. Until recently, the tools simply weren’t there—legacy systems aren’t built to support the kind of integration, automation, and flexibility a modern retirement journey demands. But that’s changing. Cloud-native platforms with open APIs and composable architecture—like what we’ve built at WealthOS—now make it possible to stitch together annuities, drawdown, and guidance into a seamless, user-centred experience. It’s not about replacing existing players, but enabling them to work together in new ways.
There’s still time to get this right. If we want pension freedoms to mean something, we need to design for the user, not the legacy stack. That starts with better infrastructure, smarter product design, and the courage to rebuild around the retiree’s needs.
Let’s stop patching over the old model and build the one we should have launched 10 years ago.