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Pension Engagement Season is needed more than ever, as our 20th Retirement Report shows.
Pension Engagement Season (PES) is upon us – and what a brilliant opportunity it offers to engage with millions of people who save into their workplace pensions.
We’re firmly behind what’s bound to be another great PES, reaching even more of our pension scheme members and employer sponsors than ever before to encourage them to pay their pension some attention, find out what they’ve got, what they’ll need – and what they can do to improve their retirement.
PES is more important than ever because too many people’s retirement prospects are not in the shape they need to be, as Scottish Widows’ 2024 Retirement Report recently highlighted.
More than a third (38%) of people are on a track for retirement where they’ll only be able to afford the basics. That’s slightly worse than last year as people continue to face cost-of-living challenges, and pension engagement remains low. Just over a third of people (34%) say they’re preparing adequately for retirement*.
The report, our 20th, is a major part of our work to understand the nation’s retirement prospects, which groups are saving well, and which ones are struggling. We know that women, and those with disabilities, for example, are lagging on the saving front but they’re not the only ones.
20 years of change
Pensions have changed massively over the two decades we’ve been questioning thousands of people (around 6,000 for the 2024 Retirement Report) about their pensions and how optimistic they feel about their future. The most optimistic group are those already retired!
Many of those retired will have Defined Benefit (DB) schemes but over the last 20 years Defined Contribution (DC) pensions have largely replaced DB ones, auto enrolment (AE) got people saving into workplace schemes, and pension freedoms have revolutionised how people take their benefits.
While the good news is there’s around £650bn invested in workplace DC pensions in the UK, there is still a long way to go to get the country on track.