A number of financial services providers have agreed to lobby the government to make changes to auto-enrolment, pension freedoms and pension sharing rules in an attempt to reduce the amount of impoverished female pensioners.

The group of insurers, professional bodies, guidance services and financial advisers revealed this week that they will carry out the lobbying in order to support Insuring Women’s Futures, the Chartered Insurance Institute-led initiative.

The commitment has been made following the launch of the initiative’s manifesto, which lays out a number of recommendations aimed at making sure that the gender pay gap, motherhood, caring and relationship breakdowns do not leave women short-changed in retirement.

For the past three years, 150 experts from across the insurance and related professions have collaborated on an intensive programme of data gathering, analysis and engagement as part of the initiative and come up with a set of strategies included in the manifesto.

Among the proposed changes are including the employer’s pension contribution in gender pay gap reporting, reforming the earning eligibility thresholds for auto-enrolment, and making pension sharing the default position in divorce.

The manifesto claims that the gender pay gap is not expected to close until 2050 and that as a result young women aged 25 years at present, will accumulate a pension that is worth 20 per cent less than that belonging to a 25-year-old man in 40 years’ time.

It also argues that without intervention through gender pay gap reporting it could take until 2100 for women to reach pension parity.

It also says that there are over three times more low paid part-time jobs than there are full-time ones and that 73 per cent of part-time jobs, and 60 per cent of low paid jobs, are held by women.

As 50 per cent of part-time workers earn less than the £10,000 per annum earnings trigger and over 81 per cent of part-time workers are women, the manifesto says that 75 per cent of employees not eligible for auto-enrolment pensions are women.

On the subject of divorce, the manifesto says that only 18 per cent of divorces currently include pension sharing and that married men’s pensions are typically five times the amount of married women’s ones.

The Insuring Women’s Futures manifesto lead author and PwC partner, Jane Portas, said that if the recommendations were to be adopted then the government could make “practical, meaningful and lasting change” to women’s financial futures.

“These cross-cutting recommendations present an opportunity for each and every one of us to act […] and by doing so we will all benefit from change,” she said.

Insuring Women’s Futures chair and Chartered Insurance Institute CEO, Sian Fisher, said: “We know some of the issues needing to be addressed are deep-rooted and will take time to have full effect. We need to empower people to come together to talk about their financial life.

“This programme has been amazing for demonstrating how an entire profession can get behind societal change. The approach to this work has identified not only the need but also the opportunity to better serve women.

"It establishes a framework for a more inclusive approach to serving the whole of society which will help build trust in insurance and personal finance.”

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