Wealth Horizon comments on Women and Pensions report

“There is a general awareness that, on average, women get paid less than men and therefore the disparity between the amount women and their male counterparts save for retirement is not unexpected. Having said that, there is no excuse for a lack of understanding when it comes to retirement planning. The fact that only 15 per cent of women say that they fully understand pensions is worrying.
“It is up to the individual to either seek advice or implement a savings plan that will enable them to have a comfortable retirement when their ability to generate income is diminished in the future– often the biggest hurdle is simply committing to a regular contribution.
“Despite this, the most encouraging point that must be highlighted is that as women are being given the chance to save (for example, with the introduction of the automatic enrolment programme built on the back of Labour’s Pensions Commission), the number of women choosing to do so has increased by 10 per cent. This point is backed up by our own research, where we found that women have a higher propensity than men to save for the long term, with women more likely to hold an investment for more than 20 years than men.
“Further to this, whereas 71 per cent of men are likely to draw down monthly on their investments in order to supplement their income, we found that only 46 per cent of women rely on their investments to complement their salary. This backs up the view that although women may save less than men overall, they are also more inclined to look at long term gains and generate compound interest by taking a longer term view.”