Up to 15 million not saving enough for retirement, Pensions Commission warns
Report looks at the state of retirement saving in the UK
The Pensions Commission has published its interim report looking at the state of retirement saving in the UK, warning that up to 15 million people are currently not contributing enough to ensure financial security in later life.
The report, published on May 19th, 2026 said there are “key challenges” in retirement across the UK, with 15 million people currently under saving, a figure the commission said could reach 19 million without action.
It noted that while many people are not saving enough for retirement, this is particularly true among low and middle earners, the self-employed and women.
The commission was set up in a bid to tackle the retirement challenge that has been growing for years, looking at why tomorrow’s retirees risk being worse off than today’s and making recommendations to reverse this.
The report also stated that ensuring financial security over longer lives must be accompanied by some combination of lower relative pensioner incomes, higher tax‑funded support, higher savings and higher retirement ages.
It added, working longer – and in particular reducing labour market inactivity among people in their fifties – is a “necessary part of achieving adequate incomes in retirement”, but confirmed longer working lives “can only be part of the answer and are easier for some people than others”.
It stated: “Responsibility for long‑term retirement adequacy must be balanced between the state, employers and individuals, and a sustainable future pensions system must balance the opportunity cost to government of spending on pensions, including the question of intergenerational fairness to taxpayers, with affordability to and deliverability for employers and the costs to individuals of saving during their working lives.
Minister for pensions Torsten Bell added: “Britain has got back into the pension saving habit, but the job is only half done with tomorrow’s pensioners still on track to be poorer than today’s.
“The Pensions Commission sets out clearly the scale of the challenge: not enough people are saving for retirement, and many of those that are aren’t saving enough.”
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This article first appeared on Professional Pensions.