As the debate on the future of pensions in the UK continues to rage, a poll for the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) casts doubt on two features of the national pension savings scheme (NPSS), proposed by the Pensions Commission.
According to NAPF, the poll suggests that the public have little faith in a new government computer system to manage their pension savings effectively and do not feel confident when it comes to choosing how their pension savings should be invested.
In the survey, respondents were asked to say how sure they were that a new
government computer system would manage their pension savings effectively. Only 16% were confident that such a system would record the amounts they had
saved without errors, while some 51% were not confident of this.
Christine Farnish, head of the NAPF, commented: If ordinary people are to be
automatically enrolled into a pension savings system, then it needs to be a system they can trust and rely on. This research suggests a widespread lack of confidence in government’s ability to set up a new computer system to manage their savings.
The NAPF has already indicated it favors a ‘supertrust’ system of pension saving for UK workers, and Ms Farnish recently criticized NPSS as ‘monolithic’ in an outspoken attack.