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Retired people are twice as likely to be forced to downsize if they have never sought independent financial advice, according to life assurer MGM Advantage.

Opinion Matters

In a wide-ranging survey on Britons' retirement prospects, MGM Advantage - the 156 year old life office recently rebranded from MGM Assurance- studied the relationship between personal finance and financial advisers.

Results from the 3289-strong survey, conducted by Opinion Matters, revealed a clear link between financial wellbeing and using an IFA.

Not only were retired people less likely to have to sell their assets if they consulted an IFA, but they were four times more likely to have to return to work to make ends meet if they had never used an IFA, than if they had.

Moreover, 60 per cent of non-retired Britons said they felt ill-informed and confused about retirement plans, but this figure dropped to 40 per cent for people who used an IFA.

And 16 per cent more people looked forward to retirement who had an IFA, compared with those without.

The results also showed interesting regional and gender trends, with Liverpudlians being the most likely to be frequent visitors to IFA offices.

Findings showed 11 per cent of Liverpudlians spoke to their IFA regularly, while 52 per cent of Southampton's inhabitants saw their adviser occasionally or frequently.

People from Liverpool were also found to be the most knowledgeable on financial terms, with 86 per cent knowing one or more technical financial terms, compared to the national average of 81 per cent.

When analysing what retired people had done, Liverpudlians were also more likely to have travelled the world compared to the rest of the nation, with more than a quarter of retired Liverpudlians having done so, compared with 17 per cent nationally.

Men were found to be twice as likely to use an IFA compared with women, and of those surveyed who saw an IFA, 8 per cent said they spoke to them frequently.

Nichola Penrice, financial adviser for Cumbria-based Smart and Cook Financial Services, said the value of speaking to an adviser was enormous given rising longevity projections.

She said: "It is a key time to see a financial adviser and advisers can guide people through. People will be in retirement for longer and that means they need to have bigger pension pots, meaning they need to save more during their working life.

"This is because the bigger the pot, the bigger the pension it will give them."