Penfold expands pension guidance and support to help employees understand and feel more confident about retirement 

Workplace pension provider Penfold has expanded its pension guidance and support offering, designed to help employees understand where they stand with their retirement savings and feel more confident about the decisions they make. 

The service brings together two things many workplace pensions do not offer in combination: human support through complimentary 1:1 pension guidance sessions and an accessible customer support team, alongside personalised digital tools including retirement forecasts and goal-setting features. Both are built into the Penfold workplace pension experience at no additional cost to employers or employees.

Penfold’s new report, Why pensions still feel confusing for so many people, based on a survey of 2,000 UK employees, supports the case for why this matters. The research found that more than four in ten employees (42%) say their pension provider either makes no difference to how they understand their pension or makes it harder, while 82% report at least one barrier to engaging more with their retirement savings.  

Early results from a pilot of the 1:1 guidance sessions are encouraging. Attendees rated the sessions 4.75 out of 5, every attendee reported feeling more confident about their pension afterwards, and the average confidence level among attendees more than doubled.

Employees who set a retirement goal through the digital tools were around twice as likely to increase their contributions as those who had not. 

Chris Eastwood, CEO and co-founder of Penfold, said: “A pension balance on its own only tells you so much. Many people want to understand whether they are on track and where to go if they have questions. Those are the things that help people feel confident about their retirement and they are what this service is designed to deliver. 

“We have always believed that human support and digital tools work best together. Giving every employee access to a 1:1 guidance session and a team they can talk to, as part of their pension rather than on top of it, is how we think a modern workplace pension should work,” concluded Eastwood.