Would you tune in to Retirement TV?

Put your hand up if you’ve ever used a cash machine, own a smartphone or used the red button on your TV remote control.

Now put your hand in the air if you’ve ever bothered to see how much money is in your pension pot or transferred money into your pension.

I’ll bet that most of you have taken money out of the hole in the wall but hardly any of you have checked your pension. But would you be more inclined to do the latter if it were as easy as using a cash machine?

According to new research by think tank Future Foundation for insurance company Friends Life, Britons would save more for their future if the pensions industry made it easier to save.

It’s a sad truth that there are more hurdles to jump if you want to save than if you want to borrow money and, let’s face it, pensions companies aren’t exactly known for embracing technology – preferring myriad forms and signatures.

So the Future Foundation report comes up with some refreshing, albeit quirky, ways in which to engage savers.

• Using ATMs to allow people to deposit cheques and cash into their pension or transfer funds from bank accounts.
• The Channel Changer Pension which would allow savers to manage their retirement pots through the red button on their TV remote controls.
• The Pensions Meter, a smartphone app that gives users real-time information on how much their pension is worth.

Being of a generation that is both disengaged with pensions but hyper-engaged with technology, this sounds like a perfect solution to an ever-increasing problem; people aren’t saving enough.

They may have a little money saved for retirement, more than likely through their employer, but they don’t have a sense of ownership of that money because they don’t have any engagement with it.

Being able to access your pension pot at the flick or switch, or the touch of an iPhone, would yank peoples’ heads from out of the sand and make them think about how far that money would, or wouldn’t stretch in retirement.

These solutions have already gone down well with the 1,000 people surveyed for the report. Nearly a third said they would be interested in depositing cash into their pension through an ATM, 59% said they would like a service which allowed you to easily check the value of your pension and retirement income. And nearly half, 48%, would be interested in a service that allowed you to add a small amount to your pension savings at any time.

Interestingly, 46% of 18 to 24-year-olds and 37% of 25 to 34-year-olds would like an app that showed how spending habits affected savings.

Younger people are the ones that the pension industry needs to engage with, and it’s clear that if they’re not going to come to pensions so pensions must come to them. Pensions firms need to be brave and make the move now, otherwise young people will reach for the remote – and it won’t be to switch to Retirement TV.

Further reading:

For more information on how to start saving for your future, read The Lolly guides:

• What is a pension and how do I get one?
• Sipp: how to pick a self-invested pension