How the UK election could impact pensions
By Kirsten Hastings, 31 May 17
What looked like a sure thing when UK prime minister Theresa May called the snap election back in mid-April has turned somewhat muddy. Aegon pensions director Steven Cameron has taken a look at what the parties’ manifestos mean for pensions.
“It’s good to see a cross-party consensus that more needs to done to protect the rights of the self-employed, including helping them to save for retirement, albeit without a great deal of detail in the manifestos,” Aegon’s pensions director said.
Of the working population, 15% (4.78 million) are now self-employed or in non-regular employment such as the ‘gig economy’ which means a growing army are excluded from auto-enrolment and are ‘flying solo’ with no employer pension contribution.
So, nudging the self-employed into pensions, similar to the ‘inertia’ under auto-enrolment, would be positive. One option would be to use the National Insurance framework to automatically deduct additional amounts from the self-employed, diverting these to a pension scheme of the individual’s choice.
“The alternative is to encourage self-employed individuals to select a pension that suits their individual needs, something many will need advice on,” Cameron concluded.
