Socius Technologies are pleased to announce the launch of their new Retirement Income Platform, SPERO®. SPERO®, an acronym for “Systematic Platform for Enhanced Retirement Outcomes”, represents a significant shift in terms of the options offered to individuals to provide an income in retirement.
Targeted at insurance and pension providers, wealth managers, and advisers who service the needs of individuals approaching and in retirement, SPERO® provides dynamic retirement income solutions that are fully tailored to each individual’s unique circumstances.
SPERO® has been designed in response to changes in the pension landscape in the UK, across Europe, the USA and Australia. New regulations give individuals more choices in retirement. Taking the UK as a typical example, pension freedoms (2015) removed the requirement to buy an annuity and introduced income drawdown as an alternative. Whilst offering a secure income for life, annuities suffer from several limitations (in general terms, they cannot be redeemed or sold, there is no ability to benefit from equity growth and they have limited or no legacy value). Income drawdown, on the other hand, offers the possibility of a rising income and a substantial legacy portfolio but suffers from its own set of limitations (sequencing risk, the risk of running out of money or having to take a much lower level of income and the opportunity cost of taking too little income and passing on excessive death benefits).
Recent academic research and market commentary have highlighted the benefit of a static combination of income drawdown and annuity purchase. At the same time, the latest financial planning software aims to illustrate the chance of running out of money based on the withdrawal rate and the current portfolio. But there are currently no products or services to help guide retirees and their advisers on how they might dynamically combine income drawdown and annuities to meet their retirement income goals (the income they want, the income they need and the legacy they want to leave) based on their current situation (their assets, age, other income, attitude to risk).
The SPERO® platform provides dynamic, personalised strategies to optimise each investor’s retirement income and legacy benefits. SPERO® generates a dynamic strategy that determines how each investor’s portfolio and the income they receive must change over time. The allocation and income they receive are adjusted in response to changing market conditions to meet their retirement income and legacy goals while ensuring they have sufficient income to provide for their needs.
Providers can then use the Socius personal account management software to implement the SPERO® strategy. The account management software can integrate with a provider’s existing systems, generating and aggregating trade instructions and allocating executed deals across individual accounts.
Key Features of SPERO®:
- SPERO® provides pre, at and post-retirement glide paths optimising individual retirement outcomes.
- Personal maximum, sustainable income withdrawal.
- Strategies to help each investor achieve their retirement income goals while protecting the critical income they need.
- Eliminates the opportunity cost of over-cautious withdrawal rates from income drawdown.
- Mitigates sequencing risk and allows investors to benefit from equity market growth.
- Retirement income solutions for annuity and non-annuity providers.
- Socius account management software can run the SPERO® process across 100,000’s of accounts generating aggregate order instructions for internal or external consumption.
- Ability to integrate with existing administration platforms to provide augmented capabilities and avoid expensive re-platforming projects.
- A front-end user interface for adviser and client or alternatively, access to a REST API to integrate with a provider’s existing front-end interfaces.
Commenting on the launch of SPERO®, David Macdonald, CEO of Socius Technologies Group Limited said, “We are delighted to bring this new innovation to the market and look forward to working with providers to deliver enhanced retirement outcomes for individuals.”