Almost 30 per cent of people over-55 are unsure if they will be able to retire on their current savings, Pension Geeks research shows.
Four out of five Brits are unhappy with the amount they save into their pension every month, while one in four people regret not starting to save for retirement earlier in life.
According to the survey, there is an evident lack of pension knowledge among UK adults, with fewer than one in 10 confident they have a thorough understanding.
Almost nine in 10 think there is not enough information about pensions available to them, and a quarter believe the information that is available is too complicated to understand.
According to Jonathan Bland, co-founder of Pension Geeks, the research has “uncovered some thought-provoking findings on the state of pensions and pension awareness in the UK."
He said: ““While auto-enrolment has been a success with four in five people planning to stay enrolled, as a nation we just are not engaged enough when it comes to how much we are saving and some of that responsibility is actually on us as an industry to do more to help.”
These findings come after the latest Scottish Widows Retirement Report, which revealed the number of people saving adequately for retirement has stalled at 56 per cent for the third year in a row, with almost a fifth of the UK adult population saving nothing at all.
That is more than nine million people, or enough individuals to fill 141,183 double-decker buses sitting bumper-to-bumper on the route from John O’Groats to Land’s End.
To help plug this pensions gap, Pension Geeks and Scottish Widows will embark on a five-day tour of some of the UK’s major cities in the lead up to Pension Awareness Day on 15 September.
Pensions experts from Scottish Widows and Pension Wise will be on board, with the bus stopping in central locations in Edinburgh, Leeds, Birmingham, Cardiff and London.
Robert Cochran, pensions expert at Scottish Widows, said: “Automatic enrolment has undoubtedly been a success for millions of UK adults who have started saving towards retirement for the first time.
“However, as the level of saving has stalled over the past few years, it is obvious even more needs to be done across the industry to better educate people on the importance of putting away as much as they can towards retirement.”
Providers “better engage with the younger generation through technology and information that can be made readily available and easy to digest,” he concluded.
maria.espadinha@ft.com
