The investment management team at Legal and General is currently looking at the future of pension schemes, concerned by the many different rules and regulations that are being placed on them.
Since 2001 there have been over 400 different pension regulations said a Legal and General spokesman, and there is concern that they are making it more difficult to attract people into company pension schemes because of all the red tape that now seems to surround them.
What a Legal and General pension customer wants is to understand the basics of how it works and have a pretty good idea of the final return when it comes to retirement. The many different regulations are moving further away from this basic concept and are making things much harder to explain in laymans terms.
A study of the retirement market by Saga Insurance has shown that equity release schemes are being used by many people to help boost finances in retirement, helping them do the things they want to do with their time.
Contrasting with a more conservative view a few years ago, around 88 percent of those surveyed by Saga Insurance, now feel equity release is a good idea. In the past the more common view was that the home should be left to children as part of the inheritance.
With nearly 80 percent of those aged 60 and over having paid off their mortgages there is certainly a substantial amount of money available that is tied up in property. The equity release option frees up this money to provide a more pleasant lifestyle.
The Prudential is warning people that the current state pension cannot be relied upon to provide a decent standard of living.
A spokesman from the Prudential said that everyone should be putting more money aside for retirement from a much earlier age. Without this financial provision there are going to be many people finding life very hard as they reach retirement, something that no-one wants to see.
According to Prudential figures well over a third of people actually lose sleep thinking about the financial pressures they will face in retirement. This situation can be resolved through forward planning and saving over a longer period of time. As long as the pension provision can be afforded by the individual and day to day living can still be enjoyed then early pension planning can transform the future.
