by LAUREN CODLING
BRITISH ASIANS contributing to their pension is at a record high, new government figures revealed last Friday (23).
An all-time high of 751,000 of those within British Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities are saving for their old age pension, according to new statistics. In the past six years, automatic enrolment has seen numbers rise by more than 313,000.
Guy Opperman, minister for pension and financial inclusion, said the figures showed that automatic enrolment was helping people across all communities to “plot a path to a more secure retirement.”
“Saving earlier and saving often is the best way to build a pension pot for later life,” Opperman said.
Automatic enrolment, introduced to help address the decline in private pension saving, aims to increase workplace pension saving in the UK.
Sharad S Chandak, the regional head of the State Bank of India (SBI) in the UK, said he was not surprised by the findings.
Speaking to Eastern Eye on Tuesday (27), Chandak said the habit of saving money came from the older generations. Specifically noting the spending habits of Indians, he said communities tended to save for their old age and for their children.
“It is a habit pattern built over the generations,” he said. “It is a family tradition in India. They believe they should be passing on their wealth to their family.”
Asked if he believed if British Asians were more cautious with their money, he agreed that the older generation could well be in the habit of doing so. However, he did not believe that the young generation were as wary with their spending.
Since 2008, every UK business must put their employees into a pension scheme and, where appropriate, pay contributions.
Tarsem Dhaliwal is the CEO of Iceland, one of the UK’s leading supermarket companies. Reacting to the news, he highlighted the workplace pension put to employees by the groceries business.
“Our workplace pension makes it easy to save for the future and is a great addition to the benefits we offer,” he said. “It helps make Iceland a great place to work.”
Other previous key findings revealed by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) showed that 87 per cent of eligible employees took part in a workplace pension in 2018, up from 84 per cent in 2017 and £90.4 billion was saved in the previous year by eligible savers.
Additional developments planned by the DWP include pensions dashboards, allowing everyone to see all of their pension pots in one place, while the new Collective Defined Contribution pension schemes will potentially offer better returns on savings.
