Opportunity spotting is key in our industry, and, this month one of these opportunities came along when the Institute of Directors (IoD) called on the government to make it easier for business owners to invest their own pension into their own business.

We have been working with Clifton and Pensionledfunding.com for over five years and back in 2012, talk around the use of pensions for business funding (Pension-led funding) was relatively rare, and often attracted criticism from the pension industry as too high a risk.

Things have really moved on, partly because of the Pension Freedom changes, and our joint marketing and PR efforts to increase the profile (and acceptance) of this form of business funding.

In particular, there have been some significant developments in the last six months. In April, Clifton partnered with the Forum of Private Business to produce a report, Pensions and Small Business, which attracted a lot of national attention. Then over the summer Pension Wise, the government’s advice service for those individuals looking to use Pension Freedoms, acknowledged that they needed to look at providing specific advice for small business owners that are considering using their pension for business funding. Now, the IoD wants the government to make it easier to fund your business by using your pension. Quite some progress.

This recent IoD announcement (and some agile pitching) allowed ProServ to achieve a big feature in The Guardian, and several comment pieces related to this topic including those featured on AccountingWEB and on Raconteur, publishers of reports in The Sunday Times and Times.

How perceptions can change…