Two-thirds of workers fear their pension won’t be big enough to fund their retirement

Fewer than one in three Irish workers expects to have a big enough pension for a comfortable retirement, according to a new report from AIB. The figure falls to just over one in four among women.But the majority are doing nothing to get a fix on what income they can expect when they stop working.Even though close to half of all workers over 25 cannot estimate what proportion of their current income they will receive in retirement, over six in 10 have never sat down with an adviser to review their pension arrangements.“Reviewing your pension does not always mean paying more into your pension pot. It can start with understanding what you already have and making sure it is working as hard for you as possible,” said Ciara Ryan, head of wealth and general insurance at AIB. READ MORE“By simply reviewing your existing arrangements, you can identify possible gaps and make more informed decisions. The earlier people take this step, the more time they will have to plan for the retirement they want.”The findings broadly reflect a survey by Aviva in recent days which found that almost two in three people over the age of 50 fear their retirement savings – State pension, workplace or private pension and investment income – will not last throughout their retirement.A similar number of retirees told the Aviva study that, given the chance, they would have changed something about how they prepared.While people are not sure what their pension fund will pay them, they are fairly confident that a shortfall in those funds means they will end up working longer than they had planned.Irish workers, on average, would like to retire at the age of 61, according to the AIB survey, but they expect to keep working until 66. Young workers have slightly higher expectations but also fear the shortfall may be greater. They would ideally retire at 58, they say, but expect to work a further six years, until they are 64.Despite those concerns, retirement planning is struggling to compete with more immediate priorities. Respondents told Amárach, which spoke to a nationally representative sample of 2,000 adults over the age of 25 for the study, that they were more likely to have thought about planning a holiday over the past 12 months (47 per cent) than about planning for retirement (22 per cent).Ryan said that while retirement may feel distant or difficult to navigate, understanding existing pension arrangements and the income they could provide is an important step towards assessing whether retirement plans are on track.Across all questions in the survey, women are in a less favourable position than men.