Pensions - Articles - Automatic Enrolment achieves over 114bn pension savings

 PensionBee CEO, Romi Savova commented: "The introduction of Auto-Enrolment has been instrumental in assisting more people to save into a pension over the last decade; helping put billions more into savers' pension pots than ever before. This is incredibly encouraging as building a more robust personal safety net for later life is crucial if savers wish to achieve their retirement ambitions, while reducing reliance on the State.

 As we look ahead to the next 10 years, PensionBee strongly believes that Auto-Enrolment can go further to support all workers in their pension saving journey. The current earnings threshold required to trigger Auto-Enrolment (at £10,000) excludes lower earners from reaping the full benefits of this system.

 It also fails to take into account the cumulative earnings of multiple part-time roles. This ultimately disadvantages women who are more likely to have several part-time jobs to account for unpaid workloads such as caregiving for children. Expanding the threshold to cover the amount earned across all jobs could not only allow more people to reap the benefits of Auto-Enrolment but also help improve the persistent gender pension gap, which is currently 38% in the UK.

 Furthermore, by automatically enrolling workers at age 18, four years earlier than the current system allows, the government could play an instrumental role in helping people to start saving from the beginning of their working lives, reducing the number of savers at risk of pension poverty in later life."