This year’s PLSA Conference Challenge asked the question of “how do we help people save enough”. The two teams, led by Steve Webb and Gregg McClymont worked through the week to generate three key ideas each as to how this can be approached.

When asked about their initial thoughts on pensions, common terms by Team Gregg included “old”, “old age pensioners” and “out-dated”, therefore, not viewing retirement savings in a positive light.

As a result of these impressions, McClymont’s team’s first key idea was the banishing and rebranding of the word pensions. They suggested that the scrapping of the word pensions and moving entirely to talking about lifetime savings may be a step in the right direction. To do this the team suggested embedding lifetime savings education into the national curriculum.

“We feel that lifetime savings is something that should be taken into schools and made part of the educational curriculum. It is important that we get young people talking about savings and making savings cool and fun. And I feel taking it into schools is the best way to start,” a team member pointed out.

Team Gregg’s second key idea was the making of pension contributions compulsory with a minimum of 10 per cent as soon as we join the workforce.

“Every month we have, from our salary, we have tax deducted, national insurance deducted and as much as everybody moans about it, it’s the norm, we get on with it, we accept it, and most of the time we don’t even think about it. So if we have compulsory pension taken out every month, it will eventually become the norm and when we do finally retire everyone will be happy that it was compulsory,” another team member said.

The team’s final key idea was a tap and go system. Discussing the benefits and success of mobile banking, the team suggested the creation of a simple app service where “you have all of your pension pots on one dashboard".

While the team hadn’t previously heard of the pensions dashboard, they built upon the idea whereby their app would not only allow you to see your pension pots in one place, but also provide members with the ability to consolidate and move pots around / into one another.

Moreover, Team Steve also looked at the aid of technology to help people save more. Their first key idea was a points makes pensions system.

The team considered the accumulation of reward card points, such as those on Clubcards and Nectar cards which can be converted into vouchers or leisure activities. Team Steve suggested that rather than receiving their points in this way, these points could generate additional funds into our pension pots.

“The amount accumulated from loyalty card points are a worthwhile sum of money. Could be in the region of £200 per month per person,” a team member highlighted.

Similarly, Webb’s team also emphasised the importance of pensions education. Their second idea, therefore, was “plain English education at three key stages in your life”. These being immediately after education, when you become a new employee and when starting a family.

“We believe you need to be educated and taught what is a pension, how does it work, how much do you need to invest for the future to have a good quality of life. Because we are not taught that, we are educated in financial terminology because there is a stigma with the word pension. You mention the word pension to someone in our generation and we put a barrier up, it’s just jargon. We need to be taught in layman’s terms, so we feel confident to invest for our future, how much and at what age.”

The team’s final idea was that scheme members should only be able to opt-out from their auto-enrolled scheme after six months. They suggested that this is enough time for members to gain a greater understanding of their pension investments and to decide whether they can see the benefits (that outweigh the costs) of contributing a percentage of their salary each month.

Ultimately both teams highlighted the necessity to break down the barriers between younger generations and pensions. With greater education and simpler terms, savers are less likely to feel alienated from pensions and are more likely to remain enrolled into their schemes. The introduction of technology to aid the consolidation of pension pots could assist in ensuring that savings for retirement are at the forefront of savers’ minds and not just something to consider in the final stage of life.

Concluding the challenge, the audience were asked to vote on the six options and option two from Team Gregg - compulsory lifetime savings - was voted as the winner with 30 per cent.

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