With millions across the UK facing a pension crisis, PensionBee is sounding the alarm on Pension Awareness Day, urging the government and the freshly relaunched Pensions Commission to protect the nation’s ‘invisible workforce’.
The Pensions Commission, tasked with assessing why future retirees may be poorer than today’s and proposing their recommendations to address this by 2027, highlights a clear opportunity for reform. Current structures still legally exclude large swathes of the workforce from automatic enrolment and the opportunity to consistently save for retirement.
PensionBee’s own data has shown that 60% of the self-employed and freelance workers can’t afford to save into a pension, with 70% of gig workers showing support for universal pension inclusion that supports every worker regardless of income, employment status, or hours worked.
PensionBee is calling for the government to:
Give self-employed workers an easy way to opt in and stay in, by automatically deducting pension payments through their self-assessment tax returns;
Explore the potential benefits of a portable pension option that stays with workers throughout their career, regardless of the type of employment they are in at the time;
Legislate for a reasonable pension transfer timeframe, to make pension transfers simple and efficient, with the aim of empowering people to make the most of the savings that they do have;
Shift the emphasis from simply getting people into pensions, to ensuring they save enough to provide dignity and security in retirement; and
Provide a greater degree of tailored support for those in insecure forms of work to boost saving among those in the gig economy.
Lisa Picardo, Chief Business Officer UK at PensionBee, said: “Whilst Auto-Enrolment has been transformative for employees, the promise of a secure retirement remains a dream for millions of people simply because they don’t fit into the traditional employment model.
“On Pension Awareness Day, we stress the need to fix the system to support retirement savings for today’s invisible workers, who will become tomorrow’s pensioners.
“The Commission has a golden opportunity to be a catalyst for overdue change, re-shaping the system so that it gives every worker a fighting chance of security in retirement.
A secure retirement should not be seen as a privilege that is reserved for those who fit traditional forms of employment.”
