This week has seen a cross-industry effort to get savers to take a closer look at their pension, with numerous industry campaigns running over the course of the month to help raise awareness of the key pension issues, and give members a safe space to quiz industry professionals.

This year’s campaigns are bigger than ever, with three campaigns running over the next month: Pensions Awareness Week 2024, the Pay Your Pension Some Attention campaign’s third year, and Pensions Dashboards Week.

Work is already underway and announcements are trickling in ahead of the big launch day, with the pair behind this year’s Pension Attention campaign confirmed to be Gemma Collins and Iona Bain.

And what better time to make this splash announcement, than the start of Pensions Awareness Week, a time that sees industry organisations combine forces to get members engaged, regardless of who their pension may be with.

Speaking to Pensions Age about this year’s campaign, Pension Geeks head geek and Pension Awareness founder, Rachel Parkinson, said: “At Pension Geeks, we can see that there’s a lot of uncertainty building around people’s futures, especially their pensions.

“After the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis that has ravaged people’s ability to save, there’s more political uncertainty about what will happen to pensions in the future. In a world of inconsistency, volatility, and uncertainty, we’re the bedrock. A household name. The go-to place that people think about when they want their pension questions answered.

“People trust us to deliver high-quality, reliable, financial education. And we do it all for free. We put financial wellbeing first, because even the smallest change today can breathe life into a retirement tomorrow.”

This focus on financial wellbeing and rebuilding saver trust is clearly needed, as industry research shared to coincide with Pensions Awareness Week has demonstrated the incredibly concerning lack of pensions knowledge.

And some are ready to give up on pensions all together, as recent analysis from Barnett Waddingham found that 10 per cent of UK employees and self-employed workers don’t plan to retire at all, with 50 per cent blaming this on affordability concerns.

But education has to be the start of any engagement efforts, with research from Unbiased revealing that 75 per cent of UK adults with a pension pot do not know its current estimated value.

What’s more, the survey found that 70 per cent are unclear on the meaning of defined benefit (DB) and nearly two thirds (64 per cent) are unclear on the meaning of defined contribution (DC).

Targeted efforts are needed to help some savers, as Interactive Investor took Pensions Awareness Week as an opportunity to highlight the worrying lack of basic pensions knowledge amongst the self-employed.

And if the pensions industry isn’t ready to step up to the plate, others will, particularly given the rapid rise of finfluencers and unofficial advice from social media figures.

One recent video on my social media, for instance, highlighted opting out of your pension as a ‘payslip hack’ to help people get more money, warning that ‘if you’re paying into a pension, this will actually be costing you money that could be invested or go into your pocket’. As backwards as that may sound to many in the industry, savers often simply still don’t think of their pension pot as theirs and may not realise the extent of the misinformation or misunderstandings being shared on social media.

Efforts are underway though, as Abrdn, alongside two of its charity partners, MyBnk and the Just Finance Foundation, have written to the Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson, calling for action to address the UK’s low levels of financial education.

This campaign was prompted by recent research, which found that lower earners with poor financial literacy experience a ‘pension penalty’ of £10,000.

Whilst the cost-of-living crisis has placed growing pressure on household finances, most simply cannot afford to opt out of their pensions, with analysis from the World Economic Forum estimating that the UK’s pension gap will rise from £6 trillion to £25 trillion by 2050.

But improving pensions awareness and trust in the industry could make changes to encourage workers to save more, such as increasing the auto-enrolment (AE) minimum contributions, more agreeable for workers and help avoid a surge in opt-outs.

After all, you’re more likely to give up some of your hard-earned pay if you know exactly where that money is going, how you will be able to access it, and how it is being looked after in the meantime.

These engagement efforts can’t be limited to just one week a year though, and those in the industry need to pick up the megaphone (whether wearing a Pension Attention t-shirt or not) in order to keep the momentum, and make sure that people are taking time out of their day to check in on their pension .

Even if it’s just a friendly reminder to a friend who has just moved houses to update their personal details with their provider (a task currently on my own to-do list!) – nudges don’t have to be a 20 page letter, they can be a friendly reminder from a colleague or family member.

Getting savers to engage with their pension is a great effort, but cutting through the noise and making sure they understand their pension is just the first step.

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