Every Thursday at Citizens Advice there's a local pension advisor who comes in and does four appointments a week through PensionWise, the government's Pension Advice Scheme, it's often run via Citizens Advice Centres.
I got to thinking that rather than the generalist advice of my role, which mainly involves dealing with some pretty desperate people, pensions advice would probably be quite nice.
I mean it's going to be generally well-organised people looking at their retirement options, obviously you are going to get some people who are NOT going to be getting good news, but for the most part I think you've got more chance of giving some positive news with Pensions compared to the general other reasons people come in for!
Routes in...
The first step would be to do the Diploma inn Regulated Financial Planning which all in cost around the £2000 mark and is a Level 4 qualification, year one of a degree...
It's run by the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) and consists of six modules which take around a year of study time. The Pensions module is one of those six...
There is another qualification route in, which is formally the equivalent to this, but just not, according to people in the industry, so I won't mention that cheaper option. The CII route is clearly the one to go for!
This actually looks pretty interesting....
All of this shit is the kind of stuff I'm interested in anyway, I'd love to know more about R01 - just financial services landscape in general and the taxation stuff would be good to know, and also Pensions.
Perhaps I am getting old, but I think I'd find this all pretty interesting.
The assessment costs are included in the fees above.
Career Prospects..?
Well you would have to probably work for a company first, but I've already single out Pension Wise as an option, and i'm sure there's another decade or so of people who will be wanting human advice, or at least a human telling them what the bot said.
Also it's a good age-proof career, I'd have no qualms making this transition in my late-50s, it's probably quite a good early 60s part-time work role!
And after a few years, a possible switch to self-employment.
It's on the list!
I am DEFO getting old!