In the year that millions will start saving for their retirement for the first time, research by Nest shows that very few people think pensions are ‘straightforward’ (6%), ‘easy to understand’ (4%), ‘simple’ (3%), ‘interesting’ (5%) or ‘engaging...
The National Association of Pension Funds is currently reviewing the Pension Quality Mark communications standard and seeking your views on how this standard should look like going forward.
To get as many views as possible it has published a discussion paper.
The deadline for submission...
UK employees are missing out on nearly £6bn of ‘free money’ each year because they are not joining the pension scheme offered through their workplace, according to Standard Life research.
Around 4.5 million people in the UK are offered a free pension contribution from...
There is an abysmal lack of understanding of pensions jargon. Indeed, members of the public have blank faces and wild misconceptions when asked the simplest financial questions in a Nest (the National Employment Savings Trust) video.
Furthermore, according to YouGov research for Nest...
The key to a successful communication exercise is to treat your scheme members as your company treats its customers, says Jon Pearce, Ferrier Pearce
When a company wants to promote its product or service to an increasingly knowledgeable consumer target audience, it first invests in detailed market research and analyses the findings. Only then will it produce a focused and sophisticated marketing strategy, designed to explain to its potential...
Investigation finds mixed levels of compliance in trust based DC pre-retirement literature
We have recently undertaken a review of pre-retirement literature.
Room for improvement
Of the literature reviewed, 30% appeared to breach retirement disclosure regulations and over half of schemes were assessed as having some scope for improvement in retirement literature and/or...
Effective pensions literature: is Darwin to blame? asks David Millar, Friends Provident
In this prevailing financial crisis you will probably not find many people creating new literature promoting pension scheme membership. All over the country, people are facing hardship and looking for any ways possible to trim expenditure. Sadly, pension benefits are a frequent casualty,...
Members need more help from schemes with choosing which pension to have suggests James Churcher, Telegraph Media Group
People do not understand pensions. Typically members are confused by the mass of technicalities around what should be a simple idea: arranging to have money to live on after you stop working.
Defined contribution (DC) schemes offer plenty of information when employees join. There is usually an...
Current hard economic times could present an opportunity for improved employee engagement in DC plans, suggests Peter Routledge, Towers Watson
The past year has seen an acceleration away from defined benefit (DB) schemes. Recent Towers Watson research has found that 50% of employers with a DB scheme expect to close it, not just to new members but to future accrual for existing members, within three years. For the majority of employers...
Emma Douglas, BlackRock, on the importance of entering into the member’s mind’s eye of their retirement
There is a significant lack of engagement from employees when it comes to pensions. Fewer than 50% of workers even regard them as the main way to save for retirement. This is one of the key findings of joint BlackRock and Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) October 2009 research...
Communicating the pension scheme is not as straightforward as it once was, says Allison Plager
Remember the good old days when pension scheme communication entailed the annual benefit statement and pretty much nothing else? That was in the era of defined benefit (DB) schemes, offered by countless companies large and small. Employees joined the scheme, barely even noticed the contributions...
