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A free website has been launched to help IFAs crystalize the retirement advice process and ensure clients use their open market option.

Retirement-Partnership.co.uk, offers advisers four key services: support through a five-step retirement advice process, tools to enable quick quotes and product comparisons, a marketplace with an extensive database of annuity and drawdown providers, and an education and discussion space to keep advisers abreast of the changes in this fast-evolving market.

The web tool is the brain child of Steve Lewis, founder of Retirement Partnership, Billy Burrows, annuities director of MPL Wealth Management, and Paul Fife, managing director of London IFA firm, Equus. Mr Lewis explained: "This is about helping IFA firms' business models. We can help set up their retirement process for them or help them integrate it into their operational systems. If you follow this advice process you will give better advice because it will be consistent, there is a clear audit trail which is good for treating customers fairly and it shows how the adviser came to his conclusions, which gives greater peace of mind to the client."

The five-step process guides advisers through initial contact, the review of circumstances, issues, options and risks, making a recommendation leading to client acceptance and action. At the bottom of each web page the site indicates things to be discussed, documents to be handed over and administration tasks for the adviser to do. Integral to this process are what Retirement Partnership calls the 12 critical factors. These factors are core to the decision-making process and help IFAs draw a greater depth of information from the client, which in turn produces a more accurate range of solutions.

The three segments are environment factors, such as economic and inflationary views, attitude to risk which includes life expectancy, death benefit and tax needs, and finally future income, which incorporates personal debt levels and the retirement asset pool from which clients can draw a retirement income.

Mr Fife said: "The 40- to 60-year-olds in this country probably hold the greatest portion of wealth in the country. They will have a lot of different assets and higher expectations about their lifestyle in retirement which is either likely to be unrealistic or will require careful planning. The longer people live, the harder it is to get it [retirement planning] right. That is the challenge for IFAs."

IFAs who choose to be guided by the five-step process will also be able to demonstrate to fee-paying clients what to expect for their money, demonstrate what they do to introducers such as accountants and solicitors, and put the firm in a strong position for merger and acquisition activity thanks to the standardisation of advice throughout the firm, Mr Lewis added.