So, it’s timely that the annual, industry-wide Pension Engagement Season (PES) is here again from 9 September, campaigning for everyone to ‘Pay Your Pension Some Attention’.
Pension Engagement Season spun out of Pension Awareness Day, which started out as one day, then it grew arms and legs – and wheels – into a week-long bus tour of the country to grab people’s attention. We still get nostalgic about hopping on board the pensions bus before we got our own supersized pension juggernaut vehicle to tour employer sites.
Yes, these things grabbed headlines at the time, and it was brilliant to meet people we could help to understand a bit more about pensions, and sometimes find lost ones that they didn’t even know they had.
But times have changed, the campaign has got bigger, extending all the way to National Pension Tracing Day in October and beyond.
We’re working with hundreds of employers as we seek to reach more people in new and innovative ways, using our pension app, TikTok, social media influencers, with employer webinars tailored to people’s level of knowledge, answering their questions and much more besides.
This year we’ll be refreshing our award-winning, AI-powered Pension Mirror to get people engaged with their pension in a simple, fun way. The mirror and the pension app demonstrate how customers can boost their pension savings, with a built-in share function to their social network.
If it’s anything like as successful as it was in 2023 when it was used hundreds of thousands of times by people to take a ‘selfie’ and compare their pension savings to their peers, it’ll be a job well done.
Helping people to know what they’ve got, understand how much they might need for retirement and what steps they can take to grow their pension, is what it’s all about.
And if we can do that across the industry, with providers, consultants, employers and government all pulling together, we can tackle the pension adequacy challenge, get people using their pension app and engaging with their savings – not just for a few weeks, but all year round – future Scottish Widows’ Retirement Reports will start to show a more optimistic picture.
That’ll really be something to look forward to.
So, I hope you’re supporting PES with as much enthusiasm as we are – what are you doing to make a difference, and can we help you?
*Scottish Widows Retirement Report, 2024
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