In the beginning, nearly 21 years ago, Self Invested Personal Pensions (SIPPs) were a niche product aimed at mainly high net worth individuals with specific and often complex investment requirements. Flexibility and quality of administration were top priorities for buyers.
SIPPs, if not exactly mass market, have certainly entered the mainstream financial planning consciousness. The dawn of the low-cost variants and insurance company SIPPs may have done nothing to add extra functionality, but has certainly raised awareness and driven sales to a wider range of clients. The response to this broader appeal has been regulation of SIPP operators and increased scrutiny by the watchdog by means of tactics such as thematic reviews. Next up is the Retail Distribution Review (RDR), the government’s answer to the problem of how to stop independent financial advisers fro...
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