The Minister for Work and Pensions Guy Opperman has called on financial, tech and pension giants to seize the “very good business opportunity” of finding self-employed retirement saving solutions.

Speaking at The Savings Tech Sprint today, 26 March 2018, Opperman said the that industry must “dare to be bold” and take the chance to help formulate government policy.

The two-day event, held by the Association of British Insurers, the Department for Work and Pensions and HM Treasury is bringing modern business together with the financial industry in order to make it easier for the self-employed to save into retirement.

Opperman said: “We can’t do this on our own, government can’t formulate policy without your help. I want you to try and feel your power, what you are doing today is formulating policy, without any shadow of a doubt.

He added that the government is committed to working with industry in order to find a solution for the five million self-employed, with only 19 per cent saving into a personal pension.

“Let me be nakedly partisan for you, it matters because there is a very good business opportunity for you here, you have a massively growing self-employed market, interested is saving, investments and pensions."

“Business see the self-employed in the hard to reach category, I don’t believe that is appropriate anymore, it is a growing market that you need to get involved in. This is a genuine opportunity and we need to dare to be bold", he added.

Previously the government has been criticised for its approach to self-employed retirement saving, with Royal London director of policy Steve Webb claiming the Taylor Review offered “little help” for improving their pensions.

In the 2017 Automatic Enrolment Review the government said it was going to take a “test and learn” approach to find the most effective way to encourage 4.8m self-employed workers to save for a pension, admitting that the current framework is “not appropriate”.

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