One in five SMEs unaware of their pension options

Almost one and a half million private sector employees do not know what funds their pension has been allocated to or have never taken the time to review their investments.

This is according to Aviva’s latest Working Lives Report and analysis of data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which found that since the introduction of auto-enrolment over three years ago, the number of pension savers who are unaware of their fund choices or have never reviewed them has risen to almost 1.5 million people – 15% of private sector employees, up from 9% back at the start of 2013.

The figure rises even higher for employees at small businesses with almost one in five (19%) indicating they are not aware of their fund choices. There is also potential for these levels to rise further over the course of 2016 amongst small business employees, with 480,000 small and medium sized enterprises beginning their auto-enrolment journey this year.

SME Publications/ SME XPO 2024