Flexibility key for retirement saving, says Grant Thornton’s Sam Whiting
Employees are now able to put their bonuses straight into their pension pots at accountancy and consulting firm Grant Thornton.
Sam Whiting, the firm’s benefits and pensions senior manager, told the Key future changes to pensions that employers need to know about REBA webinar on 10 July 2024, that employees were becoming a lot more proactive about their pensions and tax relief.
“We found that people were hitting the higher tax bracket and wanted to put their bonus into their pension pot,” she said. “People understand a lot more about salary sacrifice now and how they can use that tax relief.”
Grant Thornton focuses on offering flexibility throughout the careers of its 5,500-strong workforce, including working part-time. “We have about 20% of our possible retirees already working reduced hours, so we can see that people want flexibility later on in their careers,” Whiting added. “But I think there’s probably a greater need for flexibility throughout someone’s working life.”
With employees typically staying with the firm for four to five years on average, a key challenge is multiple pension pots. “We’re getting lots of questions about how people can find their individual pension pots, how they can transfer them across different schemes, and lots of different questions based on different types of pots they may have,” Whiting said.
Technology will be key in helping answer those questions, and enabling people to have a greater understanding of their finances as a whole, Whiting said. “Technology is bringing it out to a personalised level so it's looking at individual's circumstances, at where they are at within their career and their life cycle to then determine how much money they might need to save for retirement, or for a house.”
