It’s been an accepted wisdom over the past few decades that we are all living longer, at least as a nation. That’s now being tested.

First things first: Happy New Year. I hope it’s a good one for you, your business and your clients.

Picture the scene: a moderately busy suburban branch of a High Street bank in early 2015. A motor cycle courier arrives. He is carrying a large bin bag full of cash, the wads carefully wrapped.

The Pension Freedoms were introduced in 2015 by Chancellor George Osborne and were hailed, at the time, as a “pensions revolution” and the biggest changes to pensions in a century.