Self-invested personal pension (Sipp) provider Mattioli Woods has ceased giving pension transfer advice to people with safeguarded or defined benefit pensions.

In its final year results published today, 4 September, the group said it would stop delivering advice following an internal assessment, which found it would have to dedicate too much resource to the “small part of the business”.

The move follows the Financial Conduct Authority’s recommendations in its Retirement Outcomes Review, which included work on defined benefit transfers.

Mattioli Woods CEO, Ian Mattioli, said: “As previously reported, following consideration of the increasing costs of professional indemnity insurance, additional regulatory controls and the resources we would have to dedicate to this small part of our business, we have stopped giving pension transfer advice to individuals with safeguarded or defined benefits.”

According to Mattioli Woods, “the impact of this decision on the group’s financial performance is not expected to be material”, with pensions transfer advice accounting for 1.6 per cent of its direct revenues for the year.

The introduction of pension freedoms has meant the value of pension transfers has rocketed over the past three years, totalling £10.6bn in the first quarter of 2018, data from the Office of National Statistics found.

Furthermore, the group reported increased revenues of 15.3 per cent to £21.8m compared to the same period in 2017, driven by the total number of Sipp and small self-administrated schemes administered by the group.

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