Britain should raise pension contributions to plug ‘gender gap’, consultant Mercer says

By Huw Jones

LONDON (Reuters) – The minimum amount that workers and employers in Britain put into pension pots should be raised to help plug a retirement cash gap between men and women, and boost investment in productive assets, pensions consultant Mercer said on Wednesday.

Britain’s new Labour government has announced a review of the pensions industry to give people more value and create bigger cash piles to invest in infrastructure and green technology to raise returns and economic growth.

The government should consider increasing – in stages – the minimum “auto enrolment” amount for defined contribution (DC) schemes to 12%, from 8% at present, which could result in an extra 10 billion pounds ($13.21 billion) of contributions annually, Mercer said in a reform “road map”.

This would help plug the “gender savings gap” whereby women currently retire with average pension savings of 69,000 pounds, compared to 205,000 pounds for men, due to reasons such as women taking career gaps to have children, or part-time work.

There were calls last year to raise minimum contributions to about 16%, but with little progress as Britain faced a cost of living crisis.

Cash-strapped Britain has to rely heavily on private markets to boost investment.

Mercer and ten other pension and insurance companies such as Aviva, Legal & General, Aegon and M&G under the Mansion House Compact (MHC), voluntarily agreed last year to invest 5% of their defined contribution pots in unlisted companies by 2030, up from just 0.36%, or 793 million pounds, at present.

Insurer Phoenix Group’s chair Nicholas Lyons, who spearheaded the MHC, said Britain faces a “burning platform” for personal finance that needs tackling to improve pensions and investments.

The MHC target reflects the “art of the possible” as administrators of defined contribution funds would have rebuffed more ambitious goals, and MHC signatories were already setting up structures to invest more, Lyons said.

Story continues

There is a need to build up expertise on investing in unlisted companies in a sector that has long favoured safer assets such as government bonds, he said.

“Also how much can you actually deploy in a year? What are the investment opportunities there? We have to be patient with this,” Lyons told a Mercer event.

($1 = 0.7569 pounds)

(Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Bernadette Baum)