Tackling The Savings Gap – Q2 2017 Report

Our latest Savings Gap White Paper is now available, with quarter two 2017 highlighting that only a minority of UK savers will have enough funds for what they consider a comfortable retirement.

We polled 2,057 people, with our research indicating that a retirement income of £23,000 per a year is needed to live comfortably. However, based on actual savings behaviour, people in the UK are on course to receive an income of just £6,000 per year from their retirement fund.

This is what we call the Savings Gap, and we’ve made it our mission to close it. Here are some of the key observations from our latest report…

• Technology can help people to close the gap, with our unique impulseSave® feature seeing £80 million saved through the online platform in the last 12 months
• We found that 51% of savers believe pensions are ‘hard’ or ‘very hard’ to comprehend
• 32% of people saved nothing for retirement during Q2
• Overall, savers put an average of £354 during the quarter into pensions, with an additional £427 going into general savings
• Our research suggests a rising confidence in Britain’s post-Brexit future, with 70% of people saying their confidence has held firm since the referendum. Our study also shows that this rising optimism has fuelled a wave of investment by the over 55s
• The average Briton took on £560 worth of debt in the second quarter of 2017. Our study also found that £1,797 is the average debt threshold – the amount of debt people are in before they become concerned about it

David Harrison, Managing Partner at True Potential, believes there are positives in our findings:

“We are upbeat that things are moving in the right direction. Pensions are in the spotlight like never before and people are thinking about their financial future on a scale not seen in recent decades.”

You can read the report in full here.

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