Self-employed face £250,000 shortfall in retirement, warns IFS

SELF-EMPLOYED workers are not saving enough into their pensions, and risk being left with a shortfall of almost £250,000 in retirement, a leading think tank has warned.

Pension savings are typically set as a percentage of employees’ earnings, but most self-employed workers rarely increase their contributions, even when their income rises, the Institute for Fiscal Studies found.

Nearly half of self-employed people who do pay into a pension kept their contribution flat for two years in a row. Among those who had saved into a pension for at least nine years, around one in five never increased their contributions. This is in contrast to employees, who see their pension payments rise in line with increases in their salaries.

Pension laws mean 8pc of workers’ wages will typically be earmarked for their pensions, while freelancers have no obligation to save into a pension pot.

The most common cash contribution into the pension pots of the selfemployed is just £600 per year, the IFS said. Such low levels of savings mean that thousands of self-employed workers will fail to build a big enough pot for a moderate lifestyle in retirement.

If a self-employed 22-year-old contributed £600 annually to their pension, and increased this by 2.5pc every nine years, they would have a fund worth just £35,389 in today’s money by the time they reach the age of 68, according to separate calculations from the pension provider Aegon.

That would be £245,000 lower than the private funds needed to fund a moderate retirement, Aegon said. Steven Cameron, of Aegon, added that the self-employed had been left behind by auto-enrolment reforms introduced in 2012. Under these rules, employers are legally obliged to enrol their staff into a pension savings scheme, unless they actively opt out.

The minimum default contribution rate is currently set at 8pc on earnings between £6,240 and £50,270, with employees contributing 5pc and employers adding another 3pc.

“The self-employed have not benefited from this and many are falling far behind in their retirement planning,” said Mr Cameron.