JLT Employee Benefits has launched a pensions guidance platform to help people plan and save for their retirement.
The platform, called Pension Decision Service, will include functions covering risk criteria and fund selection, as well as retirement expectations and providing projections of people’s ‘at retirement’ savings.
The service is designed for employers to offer employees the chance to engage with their pension savings and will be based on personal contact.
To allow this JLT created a retirement relationship manager, who will act as the first point of contact and reference without automatically escalating to costlier regulated advice.
A survey conducted by JLT found 40 per cent of 40-65 year olds cannot estimate what their total pension savings will be at retirement.
And over a third of 60-65-year olds do not know the size of their pension pot, despite nearing retirement age.
Only 29 per cent of those that took part in the survey, which polled 2,000 individuals, said they had received enough support from their employer to manage their pension savings.
Around two thirds said they would welcome retirement planning as a workplace benefit.
Richard Williams, director at JLT, said the results appear to show that "talk of a pensions time bomb is not greatly exaggerated".
He said: "There are millions who are approaching retirement relying too heavily on inadequate pension pots to fund their twilight years. We fear that they are sleepwalking into potential impoverishment."
Despite not knowing the value of their pension pot, 71 per cent of respondents have done some financial planning for retirement.
But only 18 per cent have taken this advice from a professional.
Mr Williams said: “It is clear that those aged 40-65 want more financial guidance and would like this to come from their employer.
"The pensions industry and employers alike need to take responsibility for providing greater financial education to corporates and employees.
"It is particularly important that younger members of the workforce are engaged with their finances at the earliest possible stage in order to kick-start a savings mindset. This is vital in ensuring people have decent pensions to draw upon when they retire."
Gem Durham, independent financial adviser at Obsidian, agreed with Mr Williams.
She said: “We are in the grips of a mid-life pensions crises. People aren't educated about their pensions, and anything that helps them become educated has got to be welcomed.
“If the tool is easy to use and the retirement relationship manager is informative then this could be a really useful service for those whose employer uses JLT.”
But Ms Durham said the wider issues why people aren't educated about their pensions are hugely complex, and won’t be solved easily.
JLT’s pension decision service “will only be used by those who are switched on to thinking about retirement anyway and ignored by many,” she said.
“But every little helps and as part of an overall strategy it's a great idea,” she added.
JLT recently published research on the performance of the 10-main auto-enrolment providers’ default funds.
It found that individuals who are invested in the defined contribution (DC) default fund with the worst performance could be missing out on over £300,000 of additional savings by the time they are 55.
maria.espadinha@ft.com
