Given the increasing importance being placed on planning for our retirements, it may seem strange that more than 5 million British workers entitled to join their company pension scheme fail to do so, according to a survey by insurance firm Axa. That’s a staggering 28% of the working population in Britain.
One of the main causes given in the survey is that workers do not have faith in the pension system – yet the growing problems caused by an aging population and recent pension scandles should urge people to do more about their retirement planning, not less. And starting a pension early in your working life is getting more and more important.
Speaking as someone who also left it a while before joing my own company pension, I can understand the apathy for filling in complex forms for seemingly no immediate gain, and I do think that the pension system does need simplifying to make it more accessible to the “man (or woman) on the street”. Afterall, if someone like me who works in the financial services industry finds it hard to understand the jargon and terms used, how is anyone else supposed to make anything of it? This is where both the government, with the proposed simplification of pensions, plus employers themselves, must help out to provide clearer information to workers.