Redefining retirement: investing for to:morrow

Last year, we published our ground-breaking investigation into the UK’s retirement landscape: The At Retirement Reckoning. Our investigation focused on the British workforce’s expectations, understanding, planning and behaviours around retirement. 

The results were stark.

"We were expecting a bleak picture. We got a worse one. By far the most damning theme in our research is the poor outcomes for those approaching and transitioning into retirement, and the vast chasm between expectations and reality. Young savers might have been excused for being uncertain or under-researched, but those over 50 should have had support, guidance and appetite to get their ducks in a row. They have not."

We concluded our research with a call to action and set out our vision for an ideal digital solution – investing for to:morrow.

to:morrow is a bold solution for retirement income planning, combining digital technology, personalisation, and income-focused investment strategies to support better outcomes in decumulation.

With progress across the industry still disappointing, this report explores our ideal solution in more detail. But this time we focus on how a new investment model holds the key to unlocking not just higher returns, but lower risk too - a win-win for the British public. 

How your members could benefit from to:morrow

By fundamentally reframing investment design around income, our vision offers huge potential to improve member outcomes. 

• 7% uplift in retirement income 
• 70% greater confidence over upcoming income 
• Ensure members do not run out of money early
• 30% more income than a fixed annuity
• Genuine inflation protection
• Designed for personalised income needs but ready for defaults

Our findings highlight how solving the decumulation challenge must be the priority for the industry – this benefits members more than introducing private markets during the growth phase alone. Set against the Mansion House Accord, this is striking.

Implications for the Government and Providers

What’s more, our approach would support the Government and Providers with their existing key priorities:

• Building more confidence in retirement outcomes will support the Government’s ambitions around retirement adequacy.
• The clarity we provide on the mix of growth and defensive assets will support the Government’s productive finance push, allowing growth assets to be held for longer and boosting investment in private markets when it can help members most.
• Providers will be able to boost assets under management (and revenue) by achieving higher returns, ensuring members’ savings last for longer, and improving customer retention. This is welcome news for smaller providers, should the Government introduce minimum size requirements.
• The risk management offered by our creative approach addresses key reputational risks for Providers as they extend the guidance and support throughout retirement.
• Our approach would also provide a foundation for longevity pooling in the future, representing a compelling alternative to Collective DC (CDC) and its significant complexity, ongoing governance, and the challenges it faces around intergenerational fairness and income stability. 

Make no mistake – we understand the scale of the investment required to implement our ideal digital and investment solution. But the scale of the challenge we identified in The At-Retirement Reckoning demands action.

At Barnett Waddingham, we advise clients with over seven million DC savers – more than 20% of the UK workforce. For every single one of those savers, we won’t settle for less.