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In 2012, the government will introduce Personal Accounts into which low to medium income earners without access to a decent employer pension scheme or suitable low cost pensions product will automatically be enrolled.

Speaking at a Life Trust Foundation seminar today (2 October), ABI director general Stephen Haddrill said he would like auto enrolment to happen before 2012 as currently planned.

"I would like to see auto enrolment into existing schemes brought forward to get an advance on it. Why wait until 2012?" he said.

However, according to Haddrill the challenge in getting people to save into a pension has become harder as consumer confidence has fallen to an all time low on the back of the recent market volatility.

"We need confidence in the accumulation of wealth but this has been dampened by the last few weeks. The financial services industry needs to put its house in order and not make mistakes like recently", he warned.

Charlie McCreevy, a member of the European Commission, also stressed that what has happened in global equity markets presents a huge challenge for the pensions market.

"What has happened in global equity markets makes the challenges in pensions markets greater. Never must market operators be allowed to get away with that credit market behaviour again.

"We are working on a way we can avoid this in the future and underpin confidence in economies," McCreevy added.

Lord Hunt of the Wirral agreed that in the current climate it was hard for businesses and the general public to look past next week, let alone the next 10 years. However, he stressed the financial services industry could not afford to ignore the fact that the population is ageing.

"Long-term thinking does not come naturally to some people and this puts the onus on financial services providers to raise awareness of the impacts of increasing longevity," Lord Wirral said.

"We are urging the industry to bolster understanding of the impacts of increasing longevity and to improve accessibility to products that can help people financially address the fact that they may live a long life."