Schroders and the Pensions Management Institute have set up the Lifetime Savings Initiative to highlight the challenges facing UK savers.
The initiative has brought together stakeholders from across consumer, savings and pensions markets to identify, understand and propose solutions to the challenges people face everyday when managing their money.
As part of the initiative, research from Schroders and the PMI, released today (March 11), highlighted three key areas in which UK savers needed support.
This included:
- Financial resilience
- Rising costs of housing
- Long-term retirement needs
The report also found more than a fifth of adults are borrowing more money to keep up with living costs.
Meanwhile the proportion of pensioner households renting privately during retirement could triple over the next 20 years.
It also revealed the UK has a projected £350bn annual long-term savings gap.
The initiative is a multi-stage project which aims to define and quantify the extent of the problem and then identify solutions and offer recommendations to policymakers in a white paper this year.
The first stage of the project has been shared with senior stakeholders across the pensions policy, regulation, business and think tanks, Schroders and the PMI confirmed.
Ruston Smith, chair of the PMI said this was an “important societal problem” and wanted to take a collaborative approach “to help people have easier and better choices and therefore better outcomes and greater financial security.”
James Barham, executive chairman of Schroders Solutions, added: “Many stakeholders are worrying about these problems and a great deal of splendid work has been done already. This is why we are sharing our data pack now, in the hope that we can enrich the debate, and spark more conversations.
“It makes for sobering reading, but our hope is it acts as a trigger for more people to join the debate. Because together we passionately believe that if we can address some of the problems of the lifetime savings market the benefits to the UK, and its millions of citizens is almost immeasurable.”
The initiative has also spanned financial education charities, unions, insurers, banks, platforms, fintechs and consolidators.
alina.khan@ft.com
