Pensions time bomb

If you are self-employed, your working life could be ticking away towards a retirement disaster.

That’s the warning from two of Britain’s biggest pension firms, Aviva and Royal London. They are urging the Government to extend automatic retirement saving to people who work for themselves. “The lack of retirement provision among the self-employed is reaching crisis levels,” said John Lawson of Aviva.

Figures suggest only one in seven of them contributes to a pension. The companies want the annual selfassessment process to default self-employed people into pension saving. “Automatic enrolment has shown the power of nudges to get people saving,” said former Pensions Minister Steve Webb of Royal London.