Help employees get to know their pension

Pension Engagement Season aims to help people pay their workplace pension some attention.

The annual, industry-wide Pension Engagement Season (PES) campaign, which began in September and runs until Novemeber, is calling for everyone to 'Pay Your Pension Some Attention'.

Pension Engagement Season matters

PES is a welcome opportunity to encourage the millions of people who save into their workplace pension to find out more about this important employee benefit and how they can make the most of it.

This year, PES is arguably needed more than ever because too many people’s retirement prospects are not in great shape – and pension engagement remains low.

As Scottish Widows’ 2024 Retirement Report highlights, more than a third (38%) of people are on track for a retirement where they’ll only be able to afford the basics. Just a third (34%) say they’re preparing adequately for retirement.

The report is the 20th time Scottish Widows has researched the nation’s retirement prospects, which groups are saving well, and which ones are struggling, such as women, and those with disabilities.

While the good news is there’s now around £650bn invested in DC workplace pensions in the UK, the task to get more people to engage with their pension, find out what they’ve got, what they might need in the future, and save for it, is a big one.

There are simple steps they can take.

Know it: 6 ways to take control

Find out what have they saved into their pension – and any others they might have elsewhere. Using a pension app makes it easy for people to see what they’ve got.
Do they know where all their pensions are? If they’ve changed jobs since 2012, they’re likely to have been auto enrolled into a new workplace pension each time. Part of PES, National Pension Tracing Day on 29 October aims to reunite people with the estimated 2.8 million lost pensions in the UK worth an average of £9,500 each.
They might want to consider bringing multiple pensions together into one new pension plan to make things simpler, if it’s right for them.
How much will they need in retirement to give them the kind of life they want after work? The PLSA standards show that single people need at least £14,440 a year to live on but that just covers the very basics and doesn’t include rent or mortgage costs.
Do they know when they’ll be entitled to the state pension and how much that’s likely to be? They can find that out in some pension apps or go online at gov.uk
Normally pension savings can be passed on should someone pass away. Have they arranged for that to happen by filling out a pension beneficiary form with their provider? A will won’t normally cover it.

Grow it

Once they’ve got to know their pension better, they can take a small step to a bigger pension, perhaps by using projection tools to show the difference saving from a younger age can make – or how putting a little more money into a pension can really grow over time.

At Scottish Widows we’re working with hundreds of employers and EBCs to reach more people in new and innovative ways, using our pension app, Tik Tok, social media influencers, with employee webinars tailored to people’s knowledge level, answering their questions and much more besides.

Our AI-powered Pension Mirror aims to get people engaged with their pension in a simple, easy and fun way.

If it’s anything like as successful as it was in 2023 when it was used hundreds of thousands of times by people to take a ‘selfie’ and compare their pension savings to their peers, it’ll be a job well done.

And if we can do that across the industry, we can begin to tackle pension adequacy and get people engaging with their savings all year round.

Future Scottish Widows’ Retirement Reports would then likely show a much more optimistic picture.

So, let’s get behind PES so that more employees have a better future to look forward to.

#PayYourPensionSomeAttention