EXECUTIVE
SUMMARY
1
THIS NEW ANALYSIS SUGGESTS THAT AUTOMATIC ENROLMENT WILL DELIVER A REAL
IMPROVEMENT IN THE RETIREMENT OUTCOMES OF MILLIONS OF WORKERS IN BRITAIN
BUT THERE IS STILL MUCH MORE TO DO TO ENSURE THEY RECEIVE AN ADEQUATE
RETIREMENT INCOME. THE PLSA HAS SUPPORTED AUTOMATIC ENROLMENT STRONGLY
SINCE ITS INCEPTION AND IS COMMITTED TO ENSURING IT REACHES ITS POTENTIAL.
The Government estimates that around 10 million people will be newly saving as a result of automatic
enrolment by 2018
1
. For the population covered by our modelling, we estimate that there will be 7.2 million
individuals who were not contributing to a pension in 2013, and will therefore be newly saving into DC schemes
as a result of automatic enrolment. We estimate that on average, individuals will be an additional £2,500 per
year better off in retirement (in today’s prices) as a result of being automatically enrolled; for those in the 22 to
34 age group, they would be better off in retirement on average by around £4,000 per year (in today’s prices).
Despite this progress, as things stand, many individuals are not on target to attain the Pensions Commission’s
2
denition of an adequate retirement income – 67% of pre-retirement income for a median earner. This is
not, in the main, the result of current policy failing to deliver its objectives. The target for statutory minimum
contributions, 8% of qualifying earnings, was intended to achieve a replacement rate of around 45%, with the
remaining 15-22% being made up of additional voluntary contributions. Rather, many people are not on track
to achieve an adequate retirement income due to a combination of past developments, such as the gradual
decline of DB pensions from the mid-1990s; the failure of attempts to stimulate voluntary saving in the 1990s
and early 2000s; rising longevity; and the impact of relatively poor market conditions.
As we approach the 2017 Review of Automatic enrolment, the completion of phasing contributions up to 8% in
2019, and the completion next year of the State Pension Age (SPA) review
3
, we believe now is the right time to
assess the adequacy of retirement income in Britain.
The challenges are great, not least because of the high cost of an adequate pension. Under current nancial
conditions, for an individual to match the c. £8,000 they can expect to receive from the new State Pension, they
would need to accumulate a pension pot of around £280,000
4
. However, for someone aged 55-64, the average
value of an individual’s total DC savings is currently only £25,000
5
.
In this analysis, we have used the Wealth and Assets survey
6
(“WAS”) to provide a detailed snapshot of the
nation’s pension wealth and contributions in 2012-14. Overlaying this information with assumptions about
the subsequent progression of automatic enrolment
7
, we then used Hymans Robertson’s Guided Outcomes ®
methodology to project likely retirement incomes for nearly 800 stylised individuals, obtained by segmenting
the c. 40,000 individuals in the survey into representative groups and scaling them up to a population
level of c. 25.5 million. We then compared these against two markers of adequacy: an updated version of
the replacement rates used by the Pensions Commission and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s minimum
income standard
8
.
1 Workplace pensions: Update of analysis on Automatic enrolment, Department of Work and
Pensions, 2016: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/
le/560356/workplace-pensions-update-analysis-automatic enrolment-2016.pdf
2 A New Pension Settlement for the Twenty-First Century: e Second Report of the Pensions
Commission, 2005: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/www.dwp.gov.uk/
publications/dwp/2005/pensionscommreport/main-report.pdf
3 John Cridland CBE was commissioned by the UK Government to undertake the “Independent
Review of the State Pension Age” in 2016. e terms of reference for this review can be found
here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/state-pension-age-review-terms-of-
reference.
4 is gure was derived using the Money Advice Services retirement income calculator, which
can be found here: https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/tools/pension-calculator .
5 Wealth and Assets Survey, 2012-2014, Oce for National Statistics: http://webarchive.
nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/was/wealth-in-
great-britain-wave-4/2012-2014/index.html
6 Wealth and Assets Survey, 2012-2014, Oce for National Statistics: http://webarchive.
nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/was/wealth-in-
great-britain-wave-4/2012-2014/index.html
7 Details of these assumptions can be found in the appendix accompanying this report.
8 While there is much academic debate over the merits of replacement rates as a benchmark for
adequacy, we believe that the benets of adopting an approach that allows comparability with
previous work outweighs other considerations.
4