Do you remember the TV advert in which a man at a house party asks a woman what she does for a living? “I work in pensions,” she replies, and his face drops.

As an industry, one of our biggest obstacles when communicating with the public is the language we use. It can be instantly off-putting, as the woman at the house party discovered.

Why do people think pensions are boring? Part of the problem is that the prospect of drawing a pension can seem too distant to feel real.

Talking about income or savings would make more sense to many people. Some might be eager to tell us how much they want to earn in future. Others might want to discuss how best to put money to one side for a big holiday or their children’s university education.

How can we encourage people to pay attention to their pensions, as the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association urges them to do?

We could start by clarifying what a pension is. It’s a tax-efficient savings plan. Pension savers get tax relief on contributions and most of their investment returns.

And pension freedoms now give people an enormous amount of choice when drawing their retirement savings.

So maybe we could rebrand pensions as taxefficient saving plans for retirement.

It’s something to think about in the runup to the pensions dashboards.

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