Providers are being warned to increase innovation after research highlighted just one in five advisers are satisfied with the current range of retirement income and savings solutions available.

According to research from MetLife, 22 per cent of specialist retirement advisers think there has been enough innovation and new product launches to enable savers to take full advantage of the new freedoms.

The figures come a day after the one year anniversary of the pension freedoms, which were implemented on 6 April 2015.

Savers have welcomed the new pension rules, which have granted them the freedom to do as they please with their pensions at retirement.

However, around two thirds (66 per cent) of advisers have claimed providers should have been doing more in the past year to meet the high demand for new products following the flexibilities.

Furthermore, 85 per cent surveyed by MetLife have said they would welcome the opportunity to recommend new products and features to product providers which they are confident would benefit their clients.

But they acknowledged that innovation is challenging; nearly 55 per cent agree that the cost and lead time needed to develop new solutions for drawdown has stopped many providers.

“Predictions of doom and disaster have not happened yet but a year on the major disappointment about pension freedoms for advisers is the lack of innovation and new thinking,” MetLife UK management director Simon Massey said.

“The past year has been the ideal time to launch new concepts such as guaranteed drawdown but there has not been a strong enough response from providers.

“The industry has to do much more to provide certainty over capital and income along with the new flexibility that has proved so popular.”

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