New retirement campaign will help bring later life savings into everyday conversations

Millions of savers will be helped to get to know their pensions better with a new awareness campaign from autumn of this year.

Only one in five (20%) people currently feels confident they are saving enough for their retirement, according to industry figures.

The drive to help bring retirement savings into everyday conversations is being led by the Association of British Insurers (opens in new tab) (ABI) and the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (opens in new tab) (PLSA) and is also backed by several big pension providers such as Aviva, Standard Life and Scottish Widows.

HOW WILL THE RETIREMENT CAMPAIGN HELP YOU?

Savers will be able to see the campaign in different places, for example on social media and in communications from their pension schemes.

It will share tips on how to identify who your pension providers are, make sure contact details are up to date, and check how much you have saved towards retirement. (opens in new tab)

It will also help people prepare for pensions dashboards (opens in new tab), which will eventually show savers all their pension pots in one place.

The campaign aims to encourage people to engage more with existing pensions communications and to save more to achieve a higher income in retirement. The Money Edit has 10 ideas to boost your pension savings.

People may also feel encouraged to review their retirement options, consider opportunities to consolidate their savings, and see how and where their pension is invested. Money Edit reader Naomi Mellor consolidated six pension schemes into one and committed to contributing £250 a month.

Yvonne Braun, director of long-term savings policy at the ABI, said: “We know that seven out of 10 people find pensions overly complex and difficult to understand. This needs to change, fast. An engagement season focused on pension basics could have a real impact on people’s understanding of the importance of their pension and prepare the ground for pensions dashboards.”

Fifteen pension providers representing around 41.5 million customers who are in automatic enrolment schemes, defined benefit (DB) pensions, self-invested personal pensions, and even those who have started withdrawing money from their pension, have committed to support the campaign. These include Aviva, Standard Life, Royal London, Scottish Widows, Fidelity, L&G, Nest, Pru, the People’s Pension and Hargreaves Lansdown.

Helen Morrissey, senior pensions and retirement analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: “Auto-enrolment got people saving but without engagement many people still won’t get the outcomes they hope for in retirement. Simple things like checking your pension value, revising how much you put in and getting the right investments for you can have an enormous impact, and yet not enough people are doing it.”

And if you’re interested in retiring early, you may want to read our guide to the FIRE movement. Money Edit reader David Scothern explains how he has tweaked certain principles of the FIRE movement to fulfil his goal of financial independence.

Additional reporting by PA