Two thirds of people don’t pay attention to pension pots
29/07/2015
Two thirds of people over the age of 45 have admitted to not paying any attention to their pension pot, according to research from Aviva.
The research found that 41% of people aged over 45 never take the time out to review or plan their pensions, and 29% only spend one day a year doing this. A quarter of those that are retiring as soon as 2017 have still failed to spend any time reviewing their options.
Just over 60% of people aged 45 and over with a personal pension scheme have only joined one scheme, but of those with more than one pension, only 27% of them manage them very closely, and 34% of them ignore the second pot completely.
6% of people don’t know how many personal pension schemes they have, and the research suggests that many people are unclear about the types of pensions they have and are not closely involved in managing them. One in ten people even ignore their annual statements because they are unsure about how to manage their pensions, or believe their pots are too small to bother with.
Clive Bolton, Managing Director, Retirement Solutions, Aviva UK Life, said:
“An alarming proportion of the UK’s pensions pots are being left unmonitored, with many simply ignoring their pension statements and hoping for the best. At the heart of this is how involved people are with their pensions – and while they can seem complicated there is lots of online support to help people make sense of their retirement savings.
“At the very least people need to understand what their total savings are across all of their pension pots, so they can plan in an informed way for their retirement.”
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