Pension News Women Losing Out On Pensions Says New Report

Written by Editorial Team

10 March 2005

A new report from the independent Pensions Advisory Service has revealed that seven out of ten women are not making any private pension savings.

The research, fruit of the setting up of a national pensions helpline for women last October which received almost 8,000 enquiries over two months, reveals that many women are ill-informed about pensions provision.

Seventy per cent of callers were not making private pension contributions to supplement their state pension and a quarter were confused about the state pension itself.

Many divorced women were unclear about their pension entitlement and had not heard about ‘Pension Sharing’, a scheme allowing both divorced parties to benefit from previous pension arrangements that came into effect in December 2000.

Malcolm McLean, chief executive of the Pensions Advisory Service, highlighted the importance for women of making private pension savings to supplement what can be a low retirement income.

“The level of pensions available to those who are retired has a significant bearing on their quality of life,” he said.

“As women traditionally have lower paid jobs and may take time away from work for child rearing they tend to have lower pensions.”

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