With six months to go until Brexit, financial advisers have been surveyed on their key priorities for the future with most keen to see initiatives to help clients with pensions and social care costs at the top of the agenda.

A pensions cold calling ban, greater priority on funding social care and initiatives to help the self employed with their pensions remain the domestic issues at the top of most advisers’ lists.

Research carried out for Aegon looked at where government should set priorities for savers post-Brexit.

Aegon says that the findings show that while the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union on 29 March continues to dominate the national debate, advisers are more concerned about moving forward domestic personal finance issues for their clients.

Advisers’ key responses on what they would like to see the government advancing with greater priority:

Implementing a pension cold calling ban - 62%

Striking a new deal on how social care should be funded - 59%

Making housing more affordable to first time buyers - 39%

Initiatives to make pension saving the default for the self employed - 35%

Increases to automatic enrolment minimum contributions - 21%

Reform of pensions tax relief, for example a move to flat rate relief -17%

Efforts to implement a cold calling ban have been delayed several times this year although the government has said it plans to move matters forward soon.

Steven Cameron, pensions director at Aegon, said: “While Brexit will continue to dominate the government’s time in the months ahead, we can’t allow other policy initiatives which would benefit savers to be pushed back indefinitely. Financial advisers are ideally placed to highlight priorities in areas which will affect their clients’ future financial wellbeing.

“Advisers are clearly very concerned about the risks of individuals being scammed out of their pension savings by ‘cold callers’, and every month of delay risks more people losing their life savings to fraudsters.”

 “However, only one in six advisers (17%) support the Government prioritising reforming the tax relief individuals get on their pension contributions. At the moment, people who pay higher rates of income tax get more of a Government top-up than basic rate taxpayers and some have called for everyone to get the same government ‘bonus’.

"While this might be worth considering longer term, it would be very complex and Aegon agrees that other initiatives should be given higher priority.”