Introducing new Just SLI integration in FE CashCalc gross modeller

Retirement income advice has plenty of moving parts, and guaranteed income products are among the trickier ones to get right in a cashflow plan. Annuities in particular have found their way back onto advisers' radars. Gilt yields have risen substantially since 2022, and because annuity rates are largely driven by those yields, the income clients can secure has improved considerably compared to the low rate era that came before it. 

That renewed interest brings its own challenge. Once an annuity is in payment, modelling it is straightforward, the income is fixed and simply becomes part of the plan. The harder part is knowing how much of a client's retirement income to secure through an annuity in the first place, without an accurate quote from a provider to work from. Getting the death benefit right matters just as much. 

That's where our extended integration with Just comes in. Secure Lifetime Income (SLI) now works within the gross cashflow modeller in FE CashCalc, supporting annuity products in gross and, for the first time, letting you choose a smoothing fund and model the death benefit alongside the income.

The challenge of sizing guaranteed income correctly

Deciding how much of a client's pension to convert into guaranteed income is not a straightforward sum. Premiums, age and health all affect what a client can actually secure, so modelling a placeholder figure risks building the rest of the plan on shaky ground. 

A common approach among advisers is to cover a client's essential, non-negotiable living costs, sometimes described as “heating and eating”, with a lower risk, secure income such as a Just annuity. More flexible spending can then be met from investments that have room to grow. Getting that split right depends on working from an accurate figure from the outset, which means sourcing a real quote rather than an estimate. 

The death benefit matters here too. A client weighing up how much to secure through an annuity needs to understand not just the income it provides, but what happens to that product, and any benefit attached to it, when they die. 

In practice, many advisers pair this secure income with a market-based investment for the rest of the portfolio, so the client still benefits from growth over the longer term. We’ve built this integration with that in mind. Invesco's Managed Retirement Solution range has also been brought in as it was built specifically to work alongside Just's Secure Lifetime Income within the same SIPP wrapper, giving the growth portion of a client's plan room to work while the SLI element takes care of the essentials. 

What this means for you 

With the extended Just integration, you can generate an accurate SLI quote from within FE CashCalc itself, model exactly how much guaranteed income covers a client's essential costs, and see the resulting death benefit in the same plan. There's no need to source a quote separately and then rebuild it into your forecast by hand. 

That gives you one connected picture: guaranteed income covering the essentials, growth potential from the rest of the portfolio, and the outcome for the client's beneficiaries if they die. It's a clearer basis for comparing a Just annuity against other retirement income options, and for talking your client through the trade-offs. 

It also supports the kind of audit trail the FCA's retirement income advice thematic review expects. The quote, the income, and the death benefit all sit within the same cashflow planning software you're already using for the rest of the advice process, rather than being pieced together from separate sources. 

How it works 

Setting this up follows the same quick-add approach you'll already be familiar with elsewhere in FE CashCalc, and takes only a few steps: 

1.     Build a pension pot within the gross modeller, a short one-off step 
2.     Quick-add SLI 
3.     Fill out your client's details 
4.     Toggle death benefit modelling on or off 
5.     Choose whether to include a smoothing fund 
6.     Add a mortality event to model the death benefit 

Once your client's details are entered, the quote pulls through automatically. From there, toggling death benefit modelling on reflects what's paid to beneficiaries alongside the income, and adding a mortality event shows exactly when and how that death benefit applies within the plan. There's nothing to calculate or cross-check outside the tool. 

Part of a more connected FE CashCalc 

This integration is one of several we're building into FE CashCalc, all aimed at bringing the products and providers you already work with directly into your pension planning tools, rather than asking you to work across separate systems and quotes. The original Just integration brought SLI quoting into the retirement income advice you already do in FE CashCalc. This release extends that into the gross modeller, with death benefit and smoothing fund modelling alongside it. 

We'll keep developing this integration with Just, and with the other providers we work with, and we're always keen to hear which scenarios you're still finding hard to model. 

Take a look at the demo video to see the new feature in action, or get in touch to see it applied to your own client scenarios.