Only one in two people is financially confident

Swiss Life has released the results of a survey of retirement saving by 4,200 Swiss, German, French, Austrian and British nationals.
Highlights include: only 46% are confident about their current financial situation; 42% are worried about not having enough money in retirement; 32% lack confidence in their national pension system. In terms of responsibility for retirement savings, 75% believe it is the individual’s, 44% the state’s.
Significantly, 80% are prepared to adjust their current lifestyle in order to maintain the desired standard of living in retirement; half are prepared to save more for retirement; 40% are prepared to retire later.
The Swiss are the most confident/best prepared; the French are the least.

Another day, another pensions survey and the message remains the same – less than half the people surveyed are confident that they will have saved sufficient for retirement.
The most likely solution to this material retirement savings gap is for consumers to save more today or consume less tomorrow. The survey supports this view.
The winners in this scenario are the asset management industry and to a lesser extent, the insurers. The losers are the (discretionary) consumer businesses where future growth rates are likely to disappoint.