Savers now have more choice in retirement thanks to dramatic pensions freedom changes wheeled out this April. The breadth of the reforms alone has meant hardly any aspect of retirement finances has been left unchanged. In this new age of financial freedom and vastly improved consumer financial information - is there still a vacancy for the IFA?

While the reforms have been widely welcomed, they bring with them a time of unparalleled ambiguity for both investors and advisers. And of course the only way we can assess the true impact of this year’s changes is through retrospective inspection, in a few years.

One thing is for sure, with great power comes great responsibility – and in the case of people’s retirement plans – the responsibility for their financial futures is great indeed.

As the soon-to-retire trial and error this new era of freedom, the industry has been watching closely the rise in consumer financial technology, and its rather speedy refinement.

There is widespread concern in our industry that, while the government’s marketing of the pensions freedom changes have been stringent, consumers still lack adequate education to fully plan their retirement, (despite the best intentions of Pension Wise – it still fails to recommend specific products or providers) and the wealth of consumer fintech in the market can often do more to hinder than help.

As with many other aspects of our modern day lives, technology plays a central part of the investment industry. One of the greatest changes have been in the do-it-yourself consumer investment market – with a new breed of insurgents emerging in the form of online investment platforms.

The most popular consumer platforms we all know by now – Hargreaves Lansdown (possibly the biggest winner from all these changes?), Fidelity and TD Direct Investing to name just a few, but there are also the rather aptly named ‘investment in a tin’ type options such as Nutmeg and Trustnet Direct. The number of investment platforms keep multiplying ever year.

On top of this, these platforms are constantly evolving. Not only do they cost less, and are getting ever cheaper than traditional platforms, the whole host of services and information options they provide – such as regular updates and market commentary  - go a long way to educate the investor.

The rise of the ‘Robo Adviser’ is also changing the landscape of the advisory business.

These new low-cost, money management providers sieve out the need for face-to-face time with an actual human being. Rather they offer user-friendly interfaces and relatively individualised risk-profiling to determine optimal asset allocation – all nicely packaged to attract the millennial generation.

All of this, coupled with the historic mistrust of both the pensions and advisory industry fuelled by each mis-selling scandal in the headlines, is attracting increasing numbers of investors looking to go it alone. But are they properly equipped for the task and is the use of investment platforms as big as we think?

Research carried out by investment platform TD Direct Investing ahead of the pension rule change, found that two out of five Brits had plans to take advantage of the new reforms – but only 54 per cent felt fully equipped to make the best decision for their financial future. Almost half felt they did not have sufficient guidance to make the right investment choices for their pension.

The soon-to-retire demographic is an attractive market for these D2C firms, and it is those nearing retirement who are most likely to actively want to manage their investments, - which if you consider that they are the generation who are more likely to remember the worst of the scandals in our industry, this is hardly surprising.

What does this all mean for an adviser?

There still remains a real need for unbiased and coherent advice and there is a very real need for advisers to step-in and demonstrate their worth. 

The average investor may be on the right path to investment self-sufficiency, but they still have a way to go and it is up to both advisers and campaigners to give proper, transparent investment guidance and education.

Take ‘robo advisers’ for one.  At the most basic level a wealth manager provides tailored financial planning, execution and asset allocation - then evaluation and constant monitoring of the portfolio. Robo-advisers largely still concentrate on the execution aspect. Where is the hand-holding during times of crisis?

In fact, one could argue that in order to succeed, advisers should embrace the efficiency of these automated platforms for clients with smaller pots – certainly useful when the sunset clause kicks in.

Advisers should also focus more on adding value in the junctions between investment policy and financial planning – such as tax, retirement and estate planning. An automated platform considers just one aspect of the financial planning strategy; an adviser hears the whole story.

In the end, advisers who can keep pace with this new changing world and be able to leverage these new technological systems to complement their own services will succeed past just today - later down the line they will also attract the new breed of sophisticated millennial investor.

Yes, it is akin to modern day Darwinism – and like anything else in these times – it is getting a helping hand from technology.