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Six in 10 people would stay auto-enrolled in a workplace savings scheme

Joanna Faith
Written By:
Joanna Faith
Posted:
Updated:
04/08/2021

Six in ten employees would stay in a workplace savings scheme if their employer automatically enrolled them into one, a study has found.

If their employer contributed to the scheme too, in a similar way to workplace pensions, seven in ten people would opt in.

Just one in ten would definitely come out of the scheme – a very similar opt-out rate to pensions, according to the survey by Cushon, a workplace pension and savings provider.

Elsewhere, the findings suggest the pandemic has positively changed people’s attitudes towards saving.

More than half of workers (55 per cent) said the last year-and-a-half has made them more aware of the importance of saving for the future, with younger people most inclined to set money aside.

Workers aged 18–24 are twice as likely to say they are thinking about their future finances than just focusing on today. In fact 44 per cent of this age group say they ‘saved more than ever’ since March 2020 – saving almost £3,000 on average.

Despite these promising findings, there are still some people who are not thinking about the long term. One in five (19 per cent) people in the UK do not have any savings or investments at all.

Ben Pollard, chief executive and founder at Cushon, said: “We believe that the Government should look to allow employers to automatically enrol employees into workplace saving schemes albeit with safeguards in place, such as education around saving versus debt repayment.

“We know from our research that the appetite is there among employees and, even without an employer contribution, the majority would remain in a scheme.

“In the meantime, employers should think about setting up workplace savings schemes as part of their benefits offering and even consider contributing.”