Are your employees retirement ready? Support for Pension Awareness Week.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm delighted to welcome you all to this webinar on how we can prepare for Pension Awareness Week together. There's lots coming up over the next few weeks to raise awareness of pensions, and we want to support you with engaging your employees and support them in achieving the retirement lifestyle that they desire. 
 
Remember that we run these webinars quarterly and we aim to cover a variety of topics that we hope you find beneficial. At the end of today's session, we'll send an e-mail which will ask you for future suggestions of what you would like to hear from us on these webinars. We'd really appreciate if you could spare the time to complete this so that we can shape the information in these webinars to be relevant and helpful to you.  
 
We'll also follow up with useful resources we covered today and a link to today's recording and slides so you can revisit any of the information whenever you need to.  
 
Let's get started. 
 
Firstly, I wanted to introduce myself and the team here to speak to you today. My name is Robbie Adair, a Client Relationship Manager here at Royal London. My role is to support employers in managing their workplace pension scheme.  
 
I am delighted to introduce our presenters today. So firstly, Catherine Stewart, who is the Head of our Workplace Pensions Proposition with a real focus on increasing customers financial resilience.  
 
We also have Abbie Shaw, one of our Marketing Managers, and her role is all around supporting employers communicating to their employees about their pension scheme. 
 
So that's the team. But what are we going to cover today?  
 
Well, we'll be covering a range of important topics, including Pensions Awareness Week and why it's important for us to get involved. The importance of employees understanding how much they need in retirement, including living costs in the new State Pension. How you can help your employees get on track by understanding their pension pots and the different options that people have to reach their retirement goals. We'll cover the different tools, support and resources that we have to support you and make sure you're well prepared for Pension Awareness Week. And we'll summarise all the next steps at the end for you. 
 
Now, what is Pension Awareness Week? Pension Awareness Week is an annual engagement campaign which was started in 2014 by pension communication consultants Pension Geeks. It's all about encouraging people to engage with and understand their pensions better. Royal London have taken part in the campaign for a number of years, and this year we'll be one of six ambassadors. 
 
For 2025, the campaign is about taking on the pensions challenge. It aims to avoid confusing technical jargon and breaks down how people can check in with their pension to hopefully secure a comfy future. From Monday 15th to Wednesday 17th of September, there will be a number of live shows covering investments, lost pensions, transfers and budgeting. 
 
Our Pension Expert, Claire Moffat and Consumer Finance Specialist, Sarah Pennells will be hosting the Royal London webinar at 10:00 AM on Monday, 15th of September. The webinar is titled ‘Your Pension Made Simple’ and within that webinar they will cover some pension basics like how a pension works and what you can do to help keep on the right track for retirement.  
 
As you can imagine, there will be a lot of campaign activity to promote the webinar, including e-mail, app notifications, and we'll be spreading the word on our social media channels. There's also an e-mail template which includes a link to the Pension Awareness site, the only way where people can actually sign up to the live shows. 
 
We'd love for you to invite your employees along to take part and ask any questions they may have, so please check out our new web page on the employer site for more information, including the e-mail template that I just mentioned. We'll send you the link after the webinar.  
 
You'll also potentially have heard about the Pension Attention campaign, which is run by the Association of British Insurers and Pensions UK. Similar to pensions awareness, the campaign is designed to boost awareness of pensions and how they work encouraging people to pay their pensions some attention. The campaign officially launches tomorrow and is kept under wraps until then, so unfortunately I can't share anything with you today. But Royal London is once again taking part this year as one of 10 sponsors, so keep your eyes peeled on our social media channels. 
 
Now let's have a think about why it's important to raise awareness of pensions. So Government research shows that 43% of working age people are under saving for their retirement in their analysis of Future Pension Incomes Report, 2025. You may also have seen that we recently released our Financial Resilience Report showing that 52% of people haven't considered how much money they may need in retirement in the last year, and most people, that’s 69% of people don't know the value of their pension pots.  
 
It's this lack of awareness and preparation which can lead people into financial insecurity in later years and even more dissatisfaction with their standards of living. That's why it's a good idea to think about starting to save early and understand the various aspects of a pension plan. So let's take a look at how much people need for retirement, how they can achieve it, and how you as employers play a part in addressing the issue. I will hand over to Catherine to help you find out more. 
 
Thanks, Robbie. So one of the ways to get a better understanding of what people should aim for is using the Pension UK's Retirement Living Standards developed alongside Loughborough University. The Retirement Living Standards cover 3 levels of expenditure to help savers understand how much money they will need to live the lifestyle they want in retirement. 
 
The standards provide a benchmark level of annual cost to fund different standards of living in retirement based around a range of goods and services and considers different circumstances, for example living in or outside London, single or joint income households. 
 
You can see here that a moderate lifestyle for a single person would require £31,700 a year. For many people, their workplace pension, state pension and other savings could go a long way towards making up these costs. But other costs may need to be taken into account depending on personal circumstances, such as mortgages and household debt, rent, social care costs and any tax on pension income.  
 
The standards assume people are mortgage or rent free. 
 
You will hear me refer to our 2025 Workplace Pensions Research in numerous places. It shows that just over a third of people haven't actually heard of Retirement Living Standards, which is unfortunate because these standards are a useful guide for what income may be needed to achieve a desired standard of living in retirement. 
 
So let's have a look at how the State Pension contributes towards retirement income. Assuming that individuals have paid their qualifying years of National Insurance, they will get their State Pension. They need 35 qualifying years for the full State Pension. 
This is currently payable from age 66 for both men and women, but depending on when people were born could be from age 68. 
 
Looking at the weekly state pension for the 2025/26 tax year, it's clear that £230 and twenty-five pence is unlikely to be enough to maintain your employees current lifestyle when they retire.  
 
Let's not also forget that the average person is living longer. 
 
The state pension amount of £235.25 pence a week amounts to £12,014.12 annually. This assumes a person is on track to get the full State Pension and takes into account leap years. 
 
You can see here how that compares to the living standards we just looked at and the shortfall each year, even for the minimum standard of living. The minimum standard of living doesn't include any allowance for a car, just £55 for a weekly food shop and no holiday abroad. 
 
However, people want to understand more than just the cost of retirement. They also want to know how big their pension pot needs to be to achieve the lifestyle they desire, whether it be aiming for a minimum, moderate or comfortable lifestyle in retirement. 
 
The chart gives an approximate guide to the level of pension savings that might be required at age 66 to meet each of the Retirement Living Standards. 
 
Knowing roughly what amount is needed, it's worth thinking about how to get there. It is important that your employees become more pension aware, understand what they have, decide if it's enough, and take action if needed to prevent great regrets later down the line. 
 
One report from the Office for National Statistics released in January found that the average pension pot for 55 to 64 year olds was £96,500, so not enough to reach that moderate standard of living by itself. 
 
We can see that one in eight are off track for meeting a minimum standard of living, but for moderate or comfortable retirement, it's the majority that are off track. The funds required seem hard to achieve, yet research shows that people's expectations are that 45% expect a moderate lifestyle. 33% expect comfortable and only a minority expect the most basic lifestyle.  
 
Our research also shows that only 29% believe they're saving enough, 45% are unsure and 19% think they are not saving enough. 
 
And this is despite the fact that 61% expect to retire before age 66, with younger groups aiming for age 59, somewhat short of the current State Pension retirement age. That is why it's key we, and that's you and us, take the time to get more people to engage with their pension. Consider their entire financial picture to help them face the future confidently. 
 
So with that in mind, let's now talk about how you as an employer can help your employees understand more about their pension pot and different ways to help them achieve the retirement they want. 
 
The first thing to think about is are they contributing enough? The Government recently announced the revival of the Pensions Commission and one of the key issues the Commission will tackle is pension contribution levels. While there is a consensus that the current minimum contribution amount of 8% of qualifying earnings is insufficient for most people to live comfortably in retirement, there is less agreement on what the appropriate level should be, how it should be shared between employers and employees, and when any increases should be introduced.  
 
The Government has ruled out any increases in contributions due to financial constraints on households and businesses for the remainder of this parliament, which is expected to run until the middle of 2029. It's interesting to note from our research, the average pension contribution is actually 4.8% of salary rising with age, so 3.3% for 18 to 24’s to 5.2% for 50 to 69 year olds, matched by employers. 
 
A key action employees could take is to increase their contributions over and above the auto enrolment minimums, if they can afford it, because that can make a significant difference to their end pension pot. 
 
You can see from the example on screen as little as increasing a pension contribution by 1% over 5 years can have a big impact. These are illustrative figures based on a salary exchange scheme and with some assumptions of investment growth, inflation and pay rises. But in this case, a small increase could result in £122,000 increase in the amount of the pension pot. 
 
Our research shows that 19% have chosen to increase their pension savings. However, a further 10% decided to reduce their savings. 
 
Here you can see the impact of a one-off contribution. This example shows the difference between receiving a cash bonus with take home pay and the long term value of putting that bonus into a pension. 
 
£1,350 invested in pension savings and projected to increase in value until the chosen retirement age of sixty-five could be worth £3,300 in your pension. So if you have pay reviews or bonus months coming up, it may be a good time to consider this. 
 
We have several case studies showing the difference increasing a regular contribution or exchanging a bonus for a pension contribution could make, which you could share with your employees to help them understand the potential benefits. Abbie will go into more detail next, but you can find them in the Making Pensions Contributions section of the communications toolkit. 
 
Another way to help your employees is to make sure they don't lose track of any old pensions. When people move home, it can be easy to lose track of old pensions. That's why, providing us with digital contact details for your employees is important. 
It helps us stay connected even if your employee leaves your employment. 
 
According to the Financial Times, 1 in 20 employees could be missing out on lost pensions. It has been estimated that there could be about 3.3 million lost or forgotten pension pots out there. Worth an average of £9,470 each, over £31.1 billion in total. 
 
Imagine the impact finding a lost pension could make to your employees. It could be the difference between a minimum retirement lifestyle and a moderate or even comfortable one. That's why it's more important than ever to track those old pensions down. Even a few of those small and forgotten pension pots can add up and make a big difference to your employees savings. 
 
How many of your employees could you help to find all pots?  
 
So where to start? Every pension provider has to send an annual statement. If your employees know the names of their previous pension providers, they can reach out to them directly. If they don't, they should try contacting their former employers, who might be able to provide the pension provider's details. 
 
The Government has a free service called the Pension Tracing Service, which can help. By using their website, users simply enter the name of their former employer and receive contact details to hopefully help reunite them with any lost pension savings. 
Pension Tracing Day is the 26th of October, so it's a good time to raise awareness. 
 
And if your employees are able to trace lost pensions or for any pension pots they are already aware of, it's worth considering transferring these into one pension plan. 
 
Some plans, valuable benefits or guarantees, and therefore transferring these pension pots may not be the right choice for your employees. Some of these include where there's a guaranteed annuity rate providing a guaranteed level of income, where there's protected tax-free cash allowing people to access a high tax-free cash amount, if it's a defined benefit or a final salary plan or where benefits have started to be taken from the pension plan. 
 
We recommend your employees talk to a financial advisor if they're not sure about whether transferring is right for them or not. If your employees decide transferring is right for them, it's best to get in touch with your customer service team to discuss next steps. 
 
To get a full picture of what could be possible at retirement, it might be easier for employees to have their pensions in one place. Choosing to consolidate pensions could mean your employees simplify their pension savings, as having pension savings in one place makes it easier to manage. 
 
Our research showed that 47% of people transfer pensions for easier management -  by far the most popular reason. 
 
They may feel more in control of their finances as it's easier to see how much they've saved for retirement. It could reduce plan charges if they move to a plan with lower charges and find it easier to see if they're on track to meet their retirement goals. 
 
Despite this, our research found that only 18% had chosen to transfer a pension in the last year. Yet transferring a pension continues to be the topic we constantly get questions on in our customer webinars and the most requested subject to cover. We know our members are interested in this. 
 
Our Pension Experts, Sarah Pennells and Claire Moffat, recently held a customer webinar on pension transfers, which shed some light on common transfer misconceptions and provided some insight into the pros and cons of consolidating. During the webinar, they answered several questions raised by attendees from how to make a transfer to what benefits are. Attendees also asked about financial advice, wanting to know who to go to, do I need advice and how do I find a reputable financial advisor? The other popular topic was how best to track down lost pensions. The recording of this webinar, Busting Pension Transfer Myth, is on our website and available to share along with previous webinar topics. 
 
This week we kicked off our campaign Get Your Pensions Together. You'll hopefully have seen our newsletter full of the content available to share with your employees.  
 
Of course, we need to remember that combining pensions isn't for everyone. And it's important to seek financial advice before making any decision to transfer. 
 
Robbie shared the fact earlier that over 2/3 of people do not know how much is in their pension. One way for members to easily find this information and engage with their pension is on the Royal London mobile app. They can clearly see how much they have in their pension and how much is being paid into it. They can use the mobile app to transfer other pensions. They’ve also got access to a wealth of educational tools and articles.  
 
We know that if an employee has downloaded and logged into the app, they then have a higher engagement with their pension and other relevant communications we send. Across our workplace schemes, around 1/3 of employees have downloaded the app, and we'd love your support in increasing that number. 
 
Abbie will now take you through the help and support Royal London can offer you as employers. 
 
Thank you, Catherine. That's a lot to think about. So as your pension provider, we want to support you when talking to your employees and make it as easy as possible to raise awareness. We've got lots of tools and resources available and I will cover a few of those now. 
 
So our employer Communications toolkit is hosted on employer.com and it contains ready to use material on a variety of pension topics. You can find engagement materials under the Making Pension Contributions section in the toolkit, and that's got lots of support items to prompt employees to revisit their pension savings. This includes several case studies, like the one that Catherine touched on earlier about the difference increasing contributions by 1% can have on your pension pot. You can see another example of one on screen. There's a range of salaries that they're based on and available for salary exchange or relief at source schemes, so you can choose the one that's most appropriate. They're a great way to show employees the impacts that making a change now could have on their retirement. 
 
Likewise, we also have materials to help with topics like pension transfers or encouraging employees to download the mobile app. There's posters, emails or videos to use to suit whichever way you prefer to communicate. There's really no better time to start talking to your employees than Pension Awareness Week, so when we send you an e-mail after this webinar with all the links, we'd love you to have a look at the toolkit and plan to share some of the resources. 
 
In fact, to make this as easy as possible and support you over the next few weeks, there's a dedicated web page for Pension Awareness Week with the top most helpful links. So that might be a great place to start if you've not used our toolkit before.  
 
We've also got a new pensions checklist, and that's a good starting point to get your employees engaged in their pension. That's got simple steps for them to check, from downloading the app through to nominating their beneficiaries and checking their contributions. And we'd love for you to share that with your employees too, either printed or digitally, to build their engagement. 
 
As we've mentioned before, there will be a live webinar to support Pension Awareness Week on the 15th of September on the topic ‘Your Pension Made Simple’. We've talked about the e-mail template you can download to share with your employees to promote this. Previous webinar recordings are also available on royallondon.com if you think that would be helpful too. These are all great at covering the basics of pensions.  
 
And we also offer a new monthly webinar where we talk through more of the specifics of how their Royal London plan works and what's available as a Royal London customer. All new members will receive a welcome e-mail from Royal London which includes a registration link but existing employees are also welcome to join. It's just 30 minutes and it covers the things that matter most.  
 
These webinars finish with a live Q&A, so they can ask what they want to, to understand their pension. It's getting really positive ratings, so we'd love you to share these each month if you think your employees would benefit from this. The next monthly webinar is on Wednesday the 24th of September and again you can download an e-mail invitation to share from the Communications toolkit. 
 
Moving on to tools and calculators. So we've got a range of these and you can see on screen just a selection of them and how they can help your employees understand how much they could have in their pension pot by the time they retire and plan for their retirement. We've already touched on the mobile app and some of these can actually be accessed through the tool section of the app. There are lots of great resources to help with planning.  
 
In our last employer webinar, we covered the Financial Health Check, which gives each user a personalised score and areas for improvement. Or there's our pension calculator, which can also help people work out if they're on track for retirement and what their pension savings might be worth at their chosen retirement age. It's actually based on the Retirement Living Standards from Pensions UK, which we looked at earlier, so it's a great tool to play about with.  
 
And another tool is the retirement planner, which can build a personalised plan for the ideal retirement. This can be helpful as it shows how changes to lifestyle or finances can help people reach their retirement goals.  
 
That's just a few to mention, but we want you to know that there is lots available to help with awareness and understanding or to support your employees with being retirement ready. 
 
I'll hand back to Robbie now to summarise the next steps. 
 
Thank you very much, Abbie. So let's have a look at some of the dates coming up to look out for and also some key takeaways from the session today. As we mentioned earlier, there is a lot coming up over the next few weeks to get involved with and to help raise awareness and understanding of pensions. We have key events going on which we'll be communicating to members, but we do need your help to build their finance resilience.  
 
We know that when employees receive communications from their employer as well as their provider, there's additional trust and engagement. We also have a lot scheme members who we don't have e-mail addresses for, so by helping us to share this information with your employees, you're making sure they receive help and guidance to support them in achieving the retirement lifestyle they desire. 
 
This in turn helps your employees become better connected to their pension savings so that they feel more confident and in control of their financial future. We'd love you to collaborate with us to help strengthen the relationship between you, your employees and with Royal London. As we've covered, we've tried to make this as easy as possible for you, through the support and materials that we offer to boost pension awareness and understanding. 
 
So having covered the key themes of how much is needed in retirement and how employees can get on track, considering it's Pensions Awareness Week, these are the key things we're asking you to do.  
 
Pensions Awareness Week is all about getting to grips with your pension - checking in on it regularly can help your employees better manage and plan for their future. 
 
So to recap, you can support your employees in this by firstly, encouraging your employees to download or log into the Royal London app to see what their plan is worth, learn more about their contributions and use the tools and calculators that Abbie talked through earlier. You'll find helpful resources like a poster and an e-mail template in the Communications toolkit to help you raise awareness. 
 
Secondly, as Abbie mentioned, sharing our new member pensions checklist will help support your employees to take meaningful action that will help them get the most from their pension and make sure they are set up for success. We'll share the link in the e-mail that follows this session.  
 
Thirdly, promoting the upcoming Pensions Awareness customer webinar, ‘Your Pension Made Simple’, to learn the basics. It's being held on Monday the 15th of September at 10:00 am and you can use our e-mail template to raise awareness. A reminder again of our new recurring monthly member webinar, ‘Your Royal London Pension’. The next one is being held on the 24th of September at 2:00 pm where we get into the specifics of how the plan works and what's available as a Royal London customer. 
 
And lastly, exploring the toolkit, in particular looking at the resources we have held under the Making pension contributions and Transferring pension savings section and sharing what works for you and your employees. You'll find a monthly member webinar invitation in the Communications toolkit too. 
 
In the e-mail that follows today's webinar, you'll receive a link to this recording and we'll provide links to all of the resources that you'll need to make it as easy as possible for you with these key actions.  
 
And finally, just to say that I know from my role in speaking to employers that we always get questions about how to administer your scheme on our online dashboard. 
So we did want to take just a moment to make you aware of a newly launched area of our employer website called Help Centre, which has been created from your feedback. And Abbie, do you mind explaining what employers can actually find on the Help Centre? 
 
Yeah, of course. You can see some screenshots here, but as Robbie said, there's a whole dedicated section of our website now and it brings together a wealth of expert tips, practical self-service tools and clearer guidance to help you manage your workplace pension scheme smoothly. 
 
So we've created three new content sections and each are tailored to key areas of workplace pension administration. So firstly, there's a section on Your automatic enrolment duties. So this is guidance on all aspects of automatic enrolment, from enrolling and assessing employees to managing re-enrolment. 
 
We've also got a section for to Manage your scheme online, so there are step-by-step instructions and new help videos that make sure you can navigate the auto enrolment dashboard and manage your scheme with confidence.  
 
And thirdly, we have Managing your scheme members, so this has practical advice for supporting employees through changes in their pension needs. It really is full of useful information, video demonstrations of tasks, FAQs and quick links to make it easy to access the resources.  
 
It's a great place to start if you do have questions on things like using the dashboard, understanding complex topics, the tasks and actions that you're required to carry out to fulfil your employee duties or how to support your employees ever changing needs.  
 
This development is designed to provide resources that work for you and let you complete tasks in a way that suits you. So we plan to continue to evolve the Help centre based on your feedback, making sure it remains a trusted go to resource. So yeah, I do encourage you to all take a look and see what it has to offer. 
 
Lovely. Well, thank you very much Abbie. And finally, thank you for joining our third employer webinar of 2025. Like last time, we will share an e-mail with links to all the resources that we mentioned along with a copy of today's webinar recording and the slides. I do hope that you found this useful and if you have any questions or need any additional support, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. 
 
Thank you once again for your time and participation and have a lovely rest of your day.