What will a financial adviser ask you before advising on retirement?

Who sets the rules

The rules described here are set by the Financial Conduct Authority, the FCA, which regulates financial advice. They apply across the UK, in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. This guide uses no tax rates, allowances or thresholds, so no tax year applies.

Why the questions are not optional

The FCA’s rules on suitability sit in a part of its Handbook called COBS 9.2. They are in force, and the current version of the main rule dates from 1 October 2018. They require an adviser to obtain enough information to make a recommendation that is suitable for the client.

The information falls into three groups.

• Knowledge and experience. Which kinds of investment you are familiar with, how often you have bought or sold, and your education and profession.
• Financial situation. Where your regular income comes from and how much it is, your assets including cash, investments and property, and your regular commitments.
• Objectives. How long you plan to hold the investment, how you feel about taking risk, and what the money is for.

Three further points in the same rules shape the meeting.

• An adviser who has not obtained the necessary information must not make a personal recommendation.
• An adviser must not encourage a client to hold information back.
• An adviser may rely on what a client says, unless it is plainly out of date, wrong or incomplete.

What the regulator found when it checked retirement advice

In March 2024 the FCA published a review of advice to people approaching or in retirement. In June 2025 it followed up with a review of 28 firms. The follow-up says the quality of fact-finding is essential, that attitude to risk and capacity for loss are to be assessed consistently, and that the sustainability of withdrawals is key.

The gaps it found say where an adviser’s questions are likely to press hardest.

• Contradictory or insufficient records of debts and of income in retirement.
• Too little detail on planned spending and how it may change after work stops.
• Attitude to risk not revisited at retirement, and capacity for loss not assessed.
• Income modelled only to average life expectancy, which leaves no margin for a long life.
• No stress test of what a fall in markets would do to the plan.

The FCA also described good practice. That included collecting detailed information on a partner’s assets as well as the client’s, setting out objectives that show how plans develop through retirement, and simulating market falls to see their effect on a client.

The financial questions to expect

• Every pension you hold, including old workplace schemes and any that promise a set income for life.
• What State Pension you expect, and from when.
• Savings, ISAs, other investments and property, and any mortgage or other debt.
• Your partner’s pensions, savings and plans, if you have a partner.
• When you plan to stop work, and whether you plan to stop at once or step down gradually.
• What you spend now, split between essentials and everything else.
• How that spending may change, and any large one-off costs ahead.
• Money you expect to receive, such as an inheritance or the sale of a business.
• Whether you have a will, and whether anyone holds a power of attorney for you.

The first four are the financial situation the rules require. The rest are objectives, set out in enough detail for an adviser to test whether an income can last through retirement.

Two different questions about risk

Advisers separate two ideas that sound alike.

• Attitude to risk is how you feel about the value of your money rising and falling.
• Capacity for loss is how much a fall would change the life you can lead.

The FCA says a client’s tolerance for risk when drawing on savings can be inherently different from when building them. So expect the question again at retirement, even if it was answered years ago.

Some firms the FCA reviewed simulated market falls to see the effect on a client. So a question may take the form of a scenario, such as what you would do if your investments fell sharply in your first year without a salary.

Questions about health and circumstances

The FCA’s guidance on the fair treatment of vulnerable customers, known as FG21/1, was published in February 2021 and last updated in July 2026. It treats vulnerability as a risk anyone can face, not a fixed label.

It names four drivers that raise that risk. Those are poor health, life events such as new caring responsibilities, low resilience to financial or emotional shocks, and low capability, such as difficulty with reading or numbers. Firms are expected to set up their processes so that clients can disclose their needs.

Retirement is itself a life event. So an adviser may ask about the following.

• Your health, and how long people in your family have tended to live.
• Caring responsibilities, now or likely ahead.
• Recent bereavement, separation or other upheaval.
• How comfortable you feel making money decisions and handling paperwork.
• Whether there is someone else you would like involved, now or later.

These answers affect the numbers as well as the conversation. How long a plan has to last is one of the largest inputs in any retirement projection.

The questions beyond money

The rules do not list questions like these, and they come from planning practice rather than from any authority. But the FCA’s emphasis on detailed objectives through retirement opens the door to them, and some planners spend real time here. Questions you may meet include the following.

• What an ordinary Tuesday will look like a year after you stop.
• What you are retiring to, rather than from.
• What you will miss about work, whether the structure, the status, the colleagues or being the person others turn to.
• How you will introduce yourself when the job title has gone.
• How you expect to feel when the phone stops ringing and fewer people wait on your decisions.
• Whether you plan to keep some paid or unpaid work, such as board roles, consulting or mentoring, and whether that is for income, for purpose or both.
• Whether you and your partner have talked about how you will share time and space at home.
• What you want from the early, active years, and how that might change later.
• Who else you want to help with money, now or after your death.
• What enough would look like to you.

The answers feed straight into a plan. They decide when spending peaks, whether earned income carries on for a while, and how much is set aside for other people. A person who plans to keep consulting for a few years has a different plan from one who stops completely.

What the adviser gives back

MoneyHelper, the government-backed guidance service, describes what follows. The adviser gives a written advice report, with its recommendations explained clearly. You decide whether to go ahead, and whether to set things up yourself or have the adviser do it, which may cost extra.

MoneyHelper says an adviser who pressures you, does not explain a recommendation clearly or will not provide a written report shows the warning signs of a scam. Every regulated adviser, or the firm they work for, appears on the FCA’s Financial Services Register.

Does Landfall compete with a financial adviser?

No. Landfall is a modelling tool. It shows how the rules work and what different assumptions do to a plan. It makes no personal recommendation, and it is not regulated financial advice.

Regulated advice, done well, brings expertise and judgement that software does not have. An adviser asks the questions in this guide, listens to the answers and weighs what a model cannot see. That includes how a person reacts under pressure, what they leave unsaid and what matters to the people around them.

An adviser also answers to rules that software does not. The FCA’s rule on a client’s best interests, COBS 2.1.1R, has stood in its current form since 1 January 2021. It requires a firm advising a retail client on investments to act honestly, fairly and professionally in that client’s best interests. The suitability rules above require the advice to fit the person.

So an adviser’s recommendation may differ from a scenario modelled in Landfall. That is not a fault in either. A Landfall scenario is an illustration built on the assumptions you choose. An adviser’s recommendation rests on your whole circumstances, is held to regulatory standards and is made by someone accountable for it. Where the two differ, the adviser’s reasons show what the model could not see.

What Landfall can do is help you arrive prepared. It is a place to gather your figures, try your own questions and get clearer on what you want from retirement.

This guide informs. It is not advice, and it does not say whether to take advice or from whom. What an adviser asks, and what their answer means for you, turns on your own circumstances. MoneyHelper gives free, impartial guidance, including Pension Wise appointments on defined contribution pensions, and a financial adviser regulated by the FCA can advise on your own case.