David Harris, managing director of UK-based consulting firm TOR Financial, addressed the University of Auckland Retirement Policy and Research Centre yesterday.

He said New Zealand was out of step internationally and the Government needed to take the lead on developing more retirement income options, such as annuities, to help people decumulate.

He said without options people would look to “synthetic annuities”, such as rental property. He said affluent retirees who wanted to ensure they had reliable income were pushing up house prices with their property investments.

“A major concern for New Zealand is that you can’t access any longevity products like Australians or Brits can, and I don’t understand why. Why is there no political leadership coming from Government? The Government basically gave up.”

The Retirement Commissioner had not done enough to address the issue, he said. “The Retirement Commissioner is mainly focused on moving up from Wellington to Auckland and pursuing Money Week, Twitter and Facebook and letting other people drift along. There needs to be a focus.  Anecdotal evidence is that the ageing group in the population does not fully understand what an annuity does.”

Fidelity Life was the last annuity provider in the market and pulled out citing a lack of demand. Only three annuity products were sold in New Zealand in 2013 and none since.

But Harris said demand could be built. As it stood, he said banks were not inclined to stoke demand for products that would take KiwiSaver lump sums away from bank products such as term deposits. “A lot of people don’t realise as they age they could outlive their reserves. What is going to happen to your resource pool as you move forward? The only way to offset that longevity risk is with better mechanisms to harness a rate of return that is consistent.”

Lifetime annuity sales have taken off in Australia, increasing from less than $150 million in 2012 to about $425 million in 2013.

A lack of decumulation products had the potential to be a bigger problem than global warming, he said.  “I’m a bit like the canary in the cage ringing the bell, trying to bring national dialogue to the issue. The Retirement Commission notionally has this on her agenda but the Government is saying ‘problem? What problem?”