Does the pensions system work for people like you?

Only one in three people in the UK think that the current pensions system works well for people like them.

This is a striking finding from Retirement Voice 2026, which explores how people in the UK are approaching retirement today. It shows that the challenge facing policy makers and industry is not only whether people are saving enough, but whether different groups feel the system reflects the lives they live. With the Second Pensions Commission saying that ‘pension policy should enable everyone to achieve a decent standard of living in retirement’ much more still needs to be done.

So who does the system work for? The answer, of course, is that it depends: on who you are, how you work, who you work for, whether you own your home, how you save into a pension and how you retire. It also depends on what system you are talking about, the State Pension or people’s own workplace or personal pensions. 

In many ways the pension system is based on a set of assumptions which are far from the reality for many people: steady employment, regular pay, employer contributions, continuous working lives uninterrupted by caring or health needs, home ownership (usually with a partner), and enough spare income to lock money away for the future.

Those outside that model are much more likely to feel the system isn’t working for them. And in many cases, that perception reflects real structural differences within the system.

Who is least likely to feel the system works?

Retirement Voice 2026 is a representative survey of 6,000 people aged 18–80 across the UK. Its findings suggest that people may not know every technical detail of pensions policy, but they do recognise whether or not the system is working for them. Those less likely to benefit from employer contributions, automatic enrolment, stable earnings or housing wealth are also less likely to say the system works well for people like them. 

People missing out from the labour market and automatic enrolment

Some people are outside automatic enrolment altogether, including lower earners and some people with multiple jobs. Others are enrolled but have working lives that make regular saving harder, including carers, people returning from career breaks, part-time workers and those in insecure or irregular employment. Health can add a further disadvantage: only 26% of disabled people say the system works well for them, compared with 36% of non-disabled people. There is also a clear gender divide: 28% of women say the system works well for them, compared with 39% of men.

Self-employed 

For people who work for an employer there is a clear income gradient in who feels the pensions system works for them. Higher earners are generally better placed to save and more likely to benefit from tax relief and larger employer contributions. While one in four (26%) of lower earning employees earning up to £20,000 think the system doesn’t work for them, the same is true for only 17% of those employees earning £60,000.

For self-employed people, the picture is markedly different. At every point of the income distribution for self-employed people, around one in three think that the pensions system isn’t working for them. At all income levels, self-employed people miss out on employer contributions, and are not automatically enrolled into pension saving.

Renters facing higher costs in retirement

Housing costs also shape whether a given pension income delivers a decent living standard. Renters and outright homeowners may have the same income in retirement but face very different outgoings. Only 25% of renters say the system works well for them, compared with 43% of outright homeowners.

Generation X and DC savers

Some cohorts and types of pension savers are also impacted differently. Defined Contribution savers face uncertainty over how much they need for their retirement, how their pension is invested and how to turn their pot into retirement income. Generation X is particularly exposed, having come of age between the decline of Defined Benefit pensions and the later expansion of automatic enrolment. Only 26% of Gen X and 29% of people with DC pensions say the system works well for them.

Disadvantages that stack up. These factors rarely appear in isolation. We have previously supported research on ‘stacked disadvantage’ showing how risks can accumulate across work, income, housing, health, gender and family life. A person may be affected by several of these pressures at once, deepening the gap between being included in the pension system and achieving an adequate retirement.

What needs to change?

For industry: design around different lives. Support cannot be one-size-fits-all. A renter approaching retirement, a self-employed worker with a volatile income and a low-paid employee excluded from automatic enrolment face different barriers. Communications, products and support should reflect those differences rather than assume a standard saver with stable earnings and a linear career.

In practice, that means making the value of pension saving more visible, creating flexible options for irregular incomes, supporting people through caring responsibilities and career breaks, and assessing retirement adequacy after housing costs. Pension income cannot be considered separately from rent, debt, household composition and the wider pressures people may face in later life.

For the Pensions Commission: test who the system misses. The findings point to three questions. Who remains outside automatic enrolment altogether? Who is inside the system but still unlikely to achieve adequacy because default contributions are too low for their circumstances? And who needs a higher retirement income because of housing, caring, health or household structure?

The pensions system cannot correct every inequality in employment, pay, job quality, housing, health or social care. But it can recognise how those inequalities affect people’s ability to save and the costs they face in retirement, then remove avoidable disadvantages within the system itself.

Success should therefore be judged not only by improvements in average outcomes, but by whether the system works for people whose lives do not fit the model around which it was built. If it works well only for those with steady employment, regular contributions, employer support and housing wealth, it is not yet a system that works for everyone.