Good news only, please

Statistics from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) have shown that a record number of savers are now members of workplace pension schemes.

The figures show that the proportion of employees who are contributing to a company pension has risen significantly in the five years since Auto-Enrolment (AE) began.

AE was introduced in 2012 and makes it compulsory for employers to automatically enrol all eligible employees into a pension scheme unless the employee actively opts out. An employee is eligible for AE if they are aged between 22 and the state pension age and have a salary of more than £10,000.

In 2012, prior to AE, 47 per cent of UK employees were enrolled on a company pension scheme. This figure has now risen to 73 per cent in 2017. In other words, there are over 9.5 million more people saving for their retirement than there were five years ago, and it’s mainly thanks to AE.

It’s a sad reality that almost every time a pension story breaks in the press, particularly when they’re regarding UK pensions, it’s rarely good news.

Unfortunately, at the beginning of December, British pensioners had to digest what was possibly the most disheartening news for a long while.

A new report from the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), which is the world’s largest economic thinktank, has stated that the British state pension is the worst in the developed world, falling below Mexico and Chile.