Scots urged to check pensions value to keep on track for retirement
Scots are being urged to check the health of their pensions to make sure they know how much they have stored away and how much they still need to save to ensure a comfortable retirement.
This month has seen the UK’s large pension providers pushing the message to employees that it is never too early to start tracking your pensions.
New research released for the pensions industry-led Pension Attention campaign, coordinated by the Association of British Insurers (ABI) and Pensions UK indicates one in three (33%) in the UK do not know what is in their retirement pot, while more than half (52%) of adults surveyed said they have never checked their pension pot.
Many people might be thinking that the state pension will see them through - after all it is continuing to rise, thanks to the political promise of a ‘triple-lock’ matching inflation, average earnings or 2.5% – whichever is highest.
It is expected to go up another 3.9% next April - meaning it will be approaching a level where pensioners are actually taxed on their state pension.
Even with these increases however it is unlikely to be enough to fully fund retirement, especially when life-expectancy is also going up. And yet the survey of 2,000 people across the UK carried out by OnePoll in July and August. Found that nearly three in 10 (29%) people said they have no idea how much money they need for retirement.
Data from the latest Scottish Widows retirement report found that 61% of people in Scotland don’t know the total value of all their pension investments, while 47% are not confident in managing their savings for retirement and only 42% have checked the value of their pension in the last 12 months.
Robert Cochran, Pensions Expert at Scottish Widows, said Scots were generally better informed than other parts of the UK, and better prepared for retirement - but that far too many were still completely unaware of how much they had saved in their pension, or even how many pensions they had.
“We do regional analysis, and we’re usually not too bad in Scotland - we’re certainly not the worst in the UK, and the fact that we have more owner-occupiers in Scotland, and quite a big financial sector, means more people tend to be better at knowing what they need and what they’ve got,” he said
One of the biggest concerns facing UK workers at the moment is that while most people are paying into a pension, they are not putting in enough to cover their expected retirement costs.
“People are not putting away enough,” says Robert. “Every employee should be making sure they are on the highest matched contribution basis offered by their employer. This means that while they will pay a little more, their employer will also put in more, so that is free money that is often being left on the table.”
Pension calculators, which allow people to figure out how much they need to be putting away now to meet their expectations when they do finally finish work, are widely available online - but before you can figure out what you need you have to know what you’ve already got.
Thanks to the auto-enrollment scheme anyone getting a job will join their company’s pension scheme. This also means that people moving through several jobs could find they have several pension pots, and over time that can make keeping track of them a difficult prospect.
When you consider that the average value of a lost pension pot in the UK is over £9000, that makes looking into your pensions much more attractive - and with new AI tools already available, and more coming on line Robert expects a lot of people to be finding they’ve got more set aside than they expected.
“The number one question we get every year is what people can do about old pensions, and the first step is finding out what you have,” he says.
“There’s a government pension tracing service or providers like Scottish Widows will have their own. With ours, which has just been in place since February, you just need to put in whatever details you have about where you worked and when and it will track down the scheme you were in.
“It’s been revelatory, there’s people finding money all over the place.”
“The government is working on a pensions dashboard which is expected to go live in tax year ‘27/’28, and when that happens people will be finding money they never knew they had in large numbers.”
The theme for this year’s Pension Attention campaign has been growth, with the publicity backed by giant vegetable growers. And in that spirit, here are Robert’s five giant-growing secrets for a bigger pension:
Plant early
Champion growers know that the earlier they start, the longer their vegetables have to grow. Pensions benefit from time too. Starting earlier gives contributions more opportunity to benefit from investment growth and compounding. Even relatively small sums paid in earlier can have a meaningful impact over the long term.
Feed growth regularly
A prize-winning vegetable needs regular nourishment. For a pension, that means contributing consistently and reviewing what you pay in when your circumstances change. A pay rise, bonus or reduction in another expense can create an opportunity to add a little more. If your employer offers contribution matching above the standard level, check whether you are making full use of it.
Give it room to grow
Giant growers concentrate resources on the crop they want to develop. In pension terms, that means understanding what you already have and avoiding forgotten savings. Use the Government’s free Pension Tracing Service, alongside your CV or employment history, to identify schemes from previous jobs. Many providers also offer tracing support. The Scottish Widows app, for example, allows customers to trace old pensions and consider possible next steps.
Check the growing conditions
Successful growers monitor the soil, weather and progress throughout the season. Pension saving also benefits from an occasional check-in. Download your pension provider’s app, review your workplace and private pensions, and check your State Pension forecast. The HMRC app can show what you are currently on track to receive and when.
Know what you are growing towards
Every giant grower has a target. For retirement, the aim is a lifestyle rather than a weigh-in. Pensions UK’s Retirement Living Standards illustrate minimum, moderate and comfortable retirement lifestyles and their potential costs. Once you have a sense of the retirement you want, a retirement calculator can help you explore how contributions, investment growth or retirement age could affect the outcome.
Even with these new technologies, there are concerns that a growing number of people are simply falling outside the existing pensions system, with an increasingly self-employed generation never being auto-enrolled in a pension scheme.
Chris Wilson-Cambata, founder of Mint Gecko, which provides advice to freelancers, fractional professionals and specialist businesses, warned people needed more help getting ready for retirement.
“The Pensions Commission’s 2026 interim report describes pension saving among the self-employed as one of the most urgent challenges facing the UK pensions system,” he said.
“DWP analysis of HMRC self-assessment data found that just 4% of people whose income came solely from self-employment contributed to a pension in 2023–24. Among those under 45, it was just 3%. That is an extraordinary number.
“We rightly spend a lot of political energy debating how we protect people financially once they reach retirement. I think we need to spend far more time asking whether the people working today are actually being given a realistic chance to prepare for it.
“Our pension system still works particularly well if you follow a fairly traditional path: join an employer, earn a monthly salary, get automatically enrolled into a pension and have your employer contribute alongside you. But careers increasingly don’t fit neatly into that mould. People freelance, build businesses, work fractionally, have portfolio careers, move in and out of employment or combine different sources of income.
“The problem is that a surprising amount of the support we take for granted disappears the moment you step outside traditional employment. There is no employer contribution, no HR department quietly enrolling you into a pension and often no obvious place to turn for straightforward advice about pensions or wider financial planning. People end up becoming their own pensions department, finance team and benefits manager, usually alongside doing the job they actually went self-employed to do.”
He has urged more work on financial education and suggested there needed to be a consideration of how automatic enrolment could be extended to people who work outside conventional employment.
“For younger independent workers in particular, that matters enormously. The data shows pension participation among self-employed under-45s is particularly low, and the earlier somebody goes without saving, the harder it becomes to make up that ground later.
“The Pensions Commission is looking at the future of retirement saving now, with its final recommendations due in 2027. I would urge the Commission and the Government to make people who don’t fit the traditional employment mould a central part of that work.
“Flexible and independent work can be hugely positive. I certainly don’t want to discourage it. I want us to stop treating the loss of basic financial support as an inevitable price people have to pay for choosing it.”
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