1.9 million UK adults consider consolidating their pensions over the next 12 months
By Boring Money
12 Oct, 2023
As the cost of living crisis and ongoing lack of consumer confidence combine to hold back pension growth, consolidation remains a key opportunity for many firms.
There are 6 million adults in the UK who have multiple pension pots in the UK, with 1.9 million adults who want to consolidate these over the coming year.
New research from Boring Money identifies the 45–to-54-year-old age group as those most likely to consider combining their pension:
59% of 45-to-54-year-old multiple pension holders considering combining their pensions.
17% of 45-to-54-year-old multiple pension holders are planning to do this in the next 12 months.
About half a million UK adults are in this age bracket, and have 2 or more pensions, and are planning to consolidate them in the next 12 months.
Aggregating previous pensions into one pot is still a foreign concept for most – 69% of people with multiple pensions have never consolidated them and appetite for this falls after the age of 55.
Boring Money CEO and Founder Holly Mackay comments:
“Engagement with pensions remains miserably low. More people are at least looking at a statement once a year, but when it comes to taking action or actually doing something, there’s still a lot of tumbleweed blowing through a lot of pension schemes in terms of customer activity.
Making the case for consolidation is a key opportunity for providers and is the most obvious door to push on. A pre-retirement audience of people in their late 40s and early 50s is the most receptive to this. This audience is typically time poor so communications will need to be short, to the point, and very clear on the benefits”.
Notes to editors:
1. Boring Money is an independent research and publishing house which provides information, tips and Best Buy tools to savers and investors.
The business conducts regular research with industry providers and UK consumers to track the developing DIY investment market from both the customer and provider perspective. Boring Money holds test accounts with over 25 investment platform providers. It also holds regular focus groups and interviews with consumers to ensure regular input and feedback from the user perspective.
2. Founder Holly Mackay has worked in the investment industry for 20 years and is supported by a team of 28 researchers, analysts, technologists and marketing execs. Boring Money is not regulated to give personal financial advice nor is it regulated by the industry watchdog.
3. This data was extracted from The Pension Report 2023, a report designed to understand pension ownership and consumer attitudes towards pensions in the UK, and to explore the appetite for pension engagement and approaches to pension pot consolidation.
4. The report has been compiled from nationally representative survey data from 4,007 UK adults, plus additional surveys of 400 investors sourced for Boring Money Insight’s proprietary research panel.
