PensionsFeb 20 2019

Most believe they will have to work in retirement

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Most believe they will have to work in retirement

Most British adults believe they will have no choice but to keep earning during their retirement, since they will not have enough saved in their pension.

ING’s International Survey on Savings found 54 per cent of people in Britain anticipated having to remain in paid work during retirement, with 58 per cent of those looking to the gig economy or temporary work for opportunities.

Based on 14,695 global responses, including 1,041 UK adults, just 20 per cent of those not yet retired believed they would retire after the current state pension age of 65.

Meanwhile 13 per cent said they would likely work for the rest of their lives.

Jessica Exton, behavioural scientist at ING, said: "These findings shine a light on the true extent of the problems many face in reaching long-term savings goals.

"Most people in the UK report that they track their day-to-day spending in some way, but many still agree they face financial challenges, such as expecting to need to earn in retirement.

"And this is not a problem confined to the UK. Long-term planning is difficult when many are also facing short-term savings challenges, a trend seen across all countries surveyed."

These findings are supported by the latest labour statistics which showed the number of people aged over 65 still in employment was almost 1.3m at the end of 2018.

This was an increase of 106,000 over the past year and an increase of 36,000 on the previous quarter.

Helen Morrissey, pension specialist at Royal London, said: "The concept of a traditional retirement where you work five days a week and then retire at age 65 has been under pressure for some time.

"Statistics show the number of older people in the workforce continues to rise – this is particularly the case with women. It is a positive that people are able to remain in the workforce for longer to make up any shortfall in their savings and this should be encouraged wherever possible.

“We must also realise that while some people work on out of necessity, others work longer because they want to. The potential to work, even on a part time basis has the benefits of helping people financially while keeping their experience in the workforce.

"The fact is that we are living longer and need to save more to cover this. While auto-enrolment has done a great job in getting people saving for retirement more needs to be done to get them saving beyond the auto-enrolment minimums currently in place."

Andrew Pennie, head of pathways at Intelligent Pensions, added: "The research findings are sobering but do at least demonstrate that many people recognise the inadequacy of their retirement savings.

"Whether working in retirement will be as easy as people seem to assume is another matter – will health allow continued employment and will there actually be enough temporary or gig-economy jobs to go around?

"Clearly, retirement savings need to improve but at what cost? Invariably something has to give and very often other spending priorities will trump pension saving. Auto-enrolment has been a successful pension savings initiative in the UK but it needs to move to the next level with higher contribution rates and wider inclusion, perhaps also backed up by compulsion."