Almost a third (30 per cent) of unretired women have not thought about saving for later life compared to 22 per cent of men, research by Vitality has revealed.

Over half (51 per cent) attributed this gap to a lack of financial resources, stating that they cannot afford to pay into their pensions.

Vitality’s research also found that unretired women were less likely to have savings outside of a workplace pension, with 23 per cent investing their savings elsewhere compared to 35 per cent of men.

Looking into the reasons for this gap, the study found that 60 per cent of women cited a lack of money as a barrier to investing outside of their workplace pension, whilst 17 per cent cited a lack of knowledge.

Vitality went onto say that “the data continues to support the narrative that unretired women find it harder to save”, as 28 per cent of women had no pension at all compared to 19 per cent of men and the average women had £20,364 in their pension pot, 30 per cent less than the average man’s.

VitalityInvest technical expert, Prema Sohun, commented: “Women are struggling to prioritise and save for later life. While it is positive to see that many women do have a workplace pension, our data shows that they will not have enough to see them through retirement or to support them to have the kind of retirement they envisioned.

“We also know that women have longer life expectancies than men, which means they need more savings to begin with. For this reason, the earlier that women can start to save, the better - even if it’s little and often.

“As providers, there’s a lot we can do to support women in recognition of the challenges they face when it comes to saving. For example, by offering low product charges, we can help free up funds that otherwise could not be invested. This benefits women as it maximises their returns, while helping their investments to grow in a cost-efficient manner.”

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