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.
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.
According to the Prudential retired people have substantial assets and savings although they are not maximising them to aid their standard of living.
On average retired couples have almost GBP270,000 in assets and savings whilst single pensioners have half this amount. However, even though they have these large funds at their disposal, less than 20 percent of them have sought professional financial advice. A Prudential representative was amazed at these findings, feeling that pensioners were missing out on perhaps thousand of pounds extra by better using their money.
Even ignoring the value that people have in their homes a retired couple still has around GBP135,000 in accessible funds. This money should be made to work harder said the man from the Prudential and deliver a better standard of living.
