Following today’s news that the State Pension is likely to rise by 3.9% next April, I wanted to offer a comment on what I think is a much less discussed part of the pensions debate: what happens to people who don’t fit the traditional model of salaried employment.
By way of background, I’m Chris Wilson-Cambata, a full-time professionally irritating PR person and former Head of External Affairs at Coutts, where I perhaps picked up more of a passion for pensions and financial management than I expected.
I’m also the founder of Mint Gecko, a global professional habitat for freelancers, fractional professionals and specialist businesses. We work closely with people who have chosen independent careers and part of what we do is recreate some of the support infrastructure that disappears when somebody leaves traditional employment, including access to financial advice and pension support.
There is a particularly concerning pensions gap among the self-employed, including younger self-employed workers.
“Today’s news is obviously important for millions of existing pensioners, but I think it should also prompt a much wider conversation about the people who will be relying on the pension system in 20, 30 or 40 years’ time.
“The Pensions Commission’s 2026 interim report describes pension saving among the self-employed as one of the most urgent challenges facing the UK pensions system. DWP analysis of HMRC self-assessment data found that just 4% of people whose income came solely from self-employment contributed to a pension in 2023–24. Among those under 45, it was just 3%. That is an extraordinary number.
“We rightly spend a lot of political energy debating how we protect people financially once they reach retirement. I think we need to spend far more time asking whether the people working today are actually being given a realistic chance to prepare for it. Our pension system still works particularly well if you follow a fairly traditional path: join an employer, earn a monthly salary, get automatically enrolled into a pension and have your employer contribute alongside you. But careers increasingly don’t fit neatly into that mould. People freelance, build businesses, work fractionally, have portfolio careers, move in and out of employment or combine different sources of income.
“The problem is that a surprising amount of the support we take for granted disappears the moment you step outside traditional employment. There is no employer contribution, no HR department quietly enrolling you into a pension and often no obvious place to turn for straightforward advice about pensions or wider financial planning. People end up becoming their own pensions department, finance team and benefits manager, usually alongside doing the job they actually went self-employed to do.
“That is one of the reasons we give people in the Mint Gecko network access to financial advice, pensions support and other services that somebody in a large organisation might barely think twice about. I realise I’m making an argument which, if government and the financial services industry followed it to its logical conclusion, would make part of what we offer less necessary. I’m entirely comfortable with that. We shouldn’t need businesses like mine to recreate basic support simply because somebody has chosen to work independently.
“We can’t individually control inflation, wage growth or what future governments decide to do with the State Pension. But we can do a much better job of giving people the education, advice and infrastructure to take control of the things they can influence. I’d like to see far greater financial education aimed specifically at freelancers and the self-employed, much easier access to good-quality financial guidance and advice, and serious consideration of how some of the behavioral success of automatic enrolment could be extended to people who work outside conventional employment.
“For younger independent workers in particular, that matters enormously. The data shows pension participation among self-employed under-45s is particularly low, and the earlier somebody goes without saving, the harder it becomes to make up that ground later. The Pensions Commission is looking at the future of retirement saving now, with its final recommendations due in 2027. I would urge the Commission and the Government to make people who don’t fit the traditional employment mould a central part of that work.
“Flexible and independent work can be hugely positive. I certainly don’t want to discourage it. I want us to stop treating the loss of basic financial support as an inevitable price people have to pay for choosing it.
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