Blog - Wealth Management Blog

It’s all in the communication

Delegates have recently been told that lifetime allowance tax relief changes should be communicated to members through simple emails to stop people being shocked by the new regime.

A vast amount of people will not have heard of the lifetime allowance, never mind realised they’ll be affected by it. It is therefore expected that people will be shocked by the changes and will need the information to reach them and be easily understood.

Changes to the lifetime allowance rules will see it shrink from £1.8m to £1.5m.

Teresa Berkengoff,  Daily Mail General Trust head of pensions communication said that the scheme so far had avoided the use of the word ‘pension’ or ‘lifetime allowance’ in the email subject line to prevent putting people off the changes.

“We thought about the subject of the email and came up with ‘Avoid paying more tax – take action now’. We’re not going to mention pensions and we’re not going to mentioned lifetime allowance.”

The email campaign has led to an email open rate by recipients of 68%, compared to an open rate of 30% for other email campaigns.

The general public can be put off by financial buzz words and this campaign suggests that if information is relayed in layman’s terms, with a clear message attached, it will be more readily understood.