Giving evidence at the Work and Pensions Select Committee on ‘Protecting pension savers – five years on from the pension freedoms: Saving for later life’, Jamie Jenkins, director of policy and external affairs at Royal London, outlined a number of key areas in which we should develop retirement saving further.
“Automatic enrolment has been a huge success, but there is further work to do if people are to have adequate retirement savings. Dealing with the cost of living crisis should be our priority for now, but we must make plans for the future or else we will face a much more serious cost of living crisis for our retired population.
“A timetable to implement the changes recommended in the 2017 review of automatic enrolment needs to be set out to reduce the minimum age from 22 to 18, as well as removing the lower earnings limit. This will bring more people into the savings habit earlier and increase savings for the lowest paid people in society.
“A longer-term plan needs to be made – perhaps subject to positive economic indicators – which provides certainty for employers and employees about how contributions will rise in future, giving everyone time to prepare.
“There is evidently a growing Gender Pensions Gap, which should be monitored as is done with the Gender Pay Gap. Alongside that, there needs to be a concerted effort to make it easier for women to build up pensions through fixing the net pay anomaly, automating Carer’s Credits for State Pension and making the pensions sharing process easier in the event of divorce.”