Some people “find themselves” in their 40s. Mark Leathers found marathons. He also happens to be a lawyer, a pilot, and the kind of person who likes his life streamlined, his hobbies slightly intense, and his admin… minimal.
Which is exactly why his retirement move is worth paying attention to. It's making a retirement move that makes your future feel a lot clearer.
Don't we all want that? Yes?
Yes, that's what we thought too.
If you’ve ever stared at retirement paperwork and thought, “This cannot be the best way we’ve come up with,” you’re in the right place.
Mark’s retirement journey started in a pretty normal place: traditional retirement annuities with big-name providers.
If you’ve ever had to dig through fund fact sheets, updated monthly, and still felt like you weren’t seeing the full picture in a way that made sense day-to-day, you’ll recognise the frustration. Mark could monitor his RA, technically… but it felt clunky, slow, and weirdly hard for something that’s meant to be your money.
Then came the second realisation: having multiple RAs often means multiple logins, multiple sets of statements, and sometimes duplicated layers of costs. And at some point, you start asking a very reasonable question.
Why is “being responsible” so admin-heavy?
He wanted a setup where he could open a platform and get a clean view of what was happening with his retirement savings without turning it into a research project.
He also wanted something that matched modern life. Markets move when you’re not at your desk. Life happens while you’re travelling, working, training, parenting, or just trying to survive your inbox. For him, being able to access and manage his investments from anywhere mattered.
And there’s something quietly inspiring about that.
Consolidation sounds boring until you experience it.
When your retirement savings are spread across different providers, it’s easy to lose track of what you have, where it sits, and what it’s doing. Consolidation brings things into one place so monitoring becomes easier, less time-consuming, and more consistent.
Mark also raised a bigger-life point that’s genuinely worth sitting with. When people pass away, families often don’t know what accounts or investments existed. Sometimes money goes unclaimed simply because nobody knew it was there. Consolidation can be a kindness, the “make it easier for the people you love” kind.
Consolidation sounds boring until you experience it.
This is the part where we turn an inspiring story into something you can actually do.
Start by listing every retirement product you have and where it lives. If you have multiple RAs from different jobs or life phases, that’s normal. The goal is simply to get everything on one page so you’re not making decisions with half the picture.
You’re looking for the basics: provider name, policy or reference number, and any details you’ll need to identify the product correctly during a transfer. This one step saves you from the most common delay: missing or incorrect info.
Mark’s goal was clear visibility and consolidation. Yours might be similar. Ask yourself one simple question: “Do I currently have a clean, understandable view of my retirement savings that I can check easily?” If the answer is no, that’s your starting point.
An RA transfer is typically a provider-to-provider process, with forms, verification, and checks. What makes it smoother is not rushing, but being accurate. Matching details across documents matters. Clear, legible supporting docs matter.
Transfers can take time depending on processing and provider responsiveness. The best way you can keep momentum is to reply quickly if additional information is requested, and keep an eye on updates so the transfer doesn’t stall.
Consolidation makes it easier to monitor progress, check in regularly, and feel more in control of your long-term plan.
Even a small habit of checking in beats the “I’ll deal with it later” approach… because later has a habit of arriving loudly.
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