Sinead McEvoy in conversation with Deputy CEO of Brokers Ireland, Rachel McGovern

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What’s the one bit of advice that’s stayed with you over the years. 

Focus on what you can control. It’s simple advice, but incredibly powerful. In both business and life, there will always be factors beyond your influence. Markets shift, regulations change, unexpected challenges arise. By concentrating on what you can control - your decisions, actions, and mindset - you maintain perspective and avoid wasting energy on things you can’t change. This approach brings clarity, reduces stress, and has helped me move forward with confidence, even in uncertain times. 

 

You spend a lot of time helping advisers across the country in your role - what are the biggest challenges, and opportunities, that you see them facing 

The pace of change has been a defining challenge. The past five years has seen more reform in Ireland’s pension system than the previous two decades combined, and while that’s created real momentum and opportunity, the pressure to continually adapt can feel relentless.  

It’s remarkable how much has changed in such a short space of time. We’ve navigated SFDR, IORPII, multiple Finance Bill amendments, the momentum of Auto-Enrolment, and enhanced Central Bank oversight. The intention driving these is positive – to simplify, improve transparency, and deliver better outcomes for customers. But the pace of this change places real strain on advisers. It asks them to constantly evolve their processes, stay up to date on shifting regulatory expectations across their client book, and still deliver the kind of personalised, confident conversations clients rely on.   

 

We’ve seen significant shifts in a few key areas: The transposition of IORP II effectively brought traditional one-member arrangements to an end, with many directors now transitioning those benefits into alternative structures such as PRSA or master trusts. The PRSA has been reshaped by successive regulatory updates, moving from a relatively niche product to a flexible, client-friendly option that’s increasingly at the forefront of retirement planning. The government’s Auto-Enrolment programme is moving closer to implementation, creating a new state-run savings system that will sit alongside the existing system, fundamentally changing how many employers and employees engage with long-term saving. Our focus within the Retirement Solutions team is to reduce friction and remove complexity. We want advisers to feel fully supported so they can continue to guide their clients toward their best second lives. Over the past year, we’ve delivered a wide-range of consultations supporting advisers with client solutions, several technical webinars and briefings, and in-person tailored masterclasses. We’re a small team so it can be demanding but, we simply love what we do.  

Looking ahead to 2026, the focus for us will be on continuing to provide clear, timely, and practical support as advisers navigate these areas of change.  The end of the IORP II transition period on 22 April 2026 brings one-member executive pension plans to a definitive close, creating a vital transition point for many clients. It’s a real opportunity for advisers to bring clarity to clients at a moment of change, deepen planning conversations, and reinforce the value of ongoing advice.  

 

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Pensions, retirement savings, and longevity - all have never been as topical as they are right now. What's your views on how retirement-ready Ireland is now and how we might see this change over the next few years?

Yes, I’ve said it several times this year that I’ve never seen pensions discussed as openly in everyday life as they are today.  You can feel the cultural shift; I’m hearing pension conversations in my local café.

 

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But we also need to be realistic about the obstacles that remain. Awareness of the need to save won’t default to adequate savings without the right support.  Standard Life’s research finds that just 29% of adults in Ireland feel financially ready for retirement, with 2 in 5 concerned they won’t be able to retire. Confidence levels vary when we look at factors such as gender, or generation, but many people still underestimate what they’ll need to support the life they want in later years, a period that we at Standard Life refer to as their second life.  

Our second life platform reflects a philosophy we’ve long held; that engaging with retirement planning means bringing the human aspect to the fore of financial planning. Yes, there’s a need for spreadsheets, projections, and technical detail, but the person must come first. For clients to feel ready, they need to understand not just the numbers, but their hopes, needs, and mindset around their future self. Too often, people focus solely on the money, without a clear sense of what they’re saving for. Informed by over 15 years of consumer research, and decades of practical experience, our retirement readiness framework brings together the financial, social and mindset elements that shape modern retirement. Using these, our teams design tools, content, and solutions that help give clients genuine conviction in the choices they make for the second life they want. Our research consistently shows that regular engagement with a financial adviser is one of the strongest confidence builders across all three readiness indicators. If we can keep bridging that gap between the numbers and the person, we’ll make real progress toward a more retirement-ready Ireland.  

How important are brokers to the business?  

Financial advisers have been central to Standard Life’s business model for almost 200 years. Advisers remain our primary distribution channel, and as we’ve just touched on, the role of advice has never been more crucial to today’s retirement journey. We’ve always endorsed the need for expert, personal advice, and the research backs this up. We use our research to highlight the impact of good financial advice in media. At an operational level, we focus on making the adviser experience easier and more supported. That includes the work of our technical team, our digital and product specialists, our dedicated client servicing teams, our proposition and pricing teams, the engagement team, and of course our highly respected Business Managers, all working together to bring advisers the right support, when they need it. We’ve invested in our digital journey, continuing to provide online applications across our products, enhancing digital tools like the Investment Proposal tool, Annuity Quotation tool and more. We’ve expanded our event programme, and continued to expand our Business Manager team. Every change has been made with adviser feedback at the centre, and it was encouraging to see that reflected to us in adviser feedback, our 2024 adviser net promoter score was the highest we’ve recorded. We plan to continue building on that, collaborating closely with advisers to keep improving the experience they need to grow their business. 

On that note, is there an area you’re hoping to develop further with, and for, advisers in 2026?  

Next year will continue to be about supporting clarity, simplicity, and confidence, for both advisers and their clients. Collaboration will continue to be central to this, between colleagues, and our advisers. Working together and challenging each other professionally is where real momentum happens. A recent example of this, was our launch on Instagram, where I was challenged to make pension savings relatable in a 30-second format. Alongside our development in the podcast space, these newer formats reflect what we’ve been talking about. People are more open to engage with retirement planning, and pensions, when we meet them where they are and work together to make what’s traditionally seen as complex feel much more relatable.  

Sinead, thank you for taking the time to share your insights. Wishing you, and all our advisers, a restful Christmas and a strong start to 2026.