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WUN's mission is to help women to connect with other women, so they can share learnings, build confidence, and develop their own passion for the fast moving utilities space. Through our podcast episodes, we aim to provide our listeners with the skills they need to build long-lasting and fulfilling careers in the sector.
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WUN4ALL
Ep. 84 Demystifying Pensions with Susan Hope
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In this latest WUN podcast Susan Hope chats to WUN advocate Julia Stichling
Susan Hope, Business Development Director at Scottish Widows, unpacks one of the most important — and often overlooked — financial topics: pensions.
We explore why pensions matter more than many people realise, the realities behind the gender pension gap, and how life events like career breaks and raising children can significantly impact long-term financial security.
Susan shares practical insights on the key decisions that shape your pension outcomes, how to take control at different life stages, and what “being engaged” with your pension really looks like in practice. We also challenge common misconceptions and look ahead at how attitudes towards pensions — particularly for women — are starting to shift.
Whether you’re just starting out or looking to strengthen your future plans, this conversation offers clear, actionable advice to help you take charge of your financial future
Please Note Susan is not offering any pension advice but purely information only.
Don’t forget to join us for the next WUNForWEllbeing – Pension Awareness
Research indicates that women often prioritise spending on their homes and families over saving for their future and tend to have less confidence in investing. Factors like the gender pay gap and caregiving responsibilities significantly affect their finances.
Unfortunately, most people are aware of the ‘gender pay gap’ but there is also a ‘gender pension gap’ too. On average, women have 35% less pension saving than men.
Join us for this insightful workshop, in conjunction with Better with Money, to ensure you are armed with hints and tips to bridge that gap.
Susan Hope is a Chartered Financial Planner and Business Development Director at Scottish Widows, where she leads a business development team focused on workplace pensions and employee engagement.
With over three decades of experience in the financial services industry, Susan is a passionate champion for closing the gender pension gap and empowering women to build financial resilience. Her advocacy recently took her to the House of Lords, where she spoke on the critical importance of financial wellbeing for women across the UK.
Combining personal insight with deep professional expertise, Susan is a regular contributor to both trade and consumer media.
Welcome to the Women's Utilities Network One for all podcast. Our corner of the world, where we'll be talking all things energy, water, sharing personal stories and debating female issues.
Speaker B:Enjoy. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Women's Utility Network podcast. My name is Julia Stichting, I'm one of the advocates here at THE One and I'm very excited to reach Joined today for another podcast recording by Susan Hope. She's the Business Development Director at Scottish Widows. Welcome, Susan.
Speaker A:Delighted to be here. Excited for the conversation.
Speaker B:It's a very different conversation that we're having today because it's not as much water related as such, but it's something that I think is really important for everyone because we're going to talk about pensions. Before we start diving into the topic, I'd be really excited to hear a bit about you and where you've come from, your background, your role at Scottish Widows and how have you found your way into the world of pension intentions.
Speaker A:Julia, I'm delighted to be here and I hope there's lots of women listening today. And for the women who are listening, I hope that they share this after the conversation so we can help more of the women in the UK retire with more. Why does that matter to me? So, as you said, my name is Susan Hope and I am the Business Development Director at Scottish Widows. I've been there for five years, but today I'm really here as a passionate pension advocate. Pensions is really personal to me and I think until you make pensions personal, it will just be percentages and numbers that almost feel abstract. So to give a very quick potted history of Susan Hope, my mum is 72 and she is still working through no fault of her own, but just trying to navigate a financial system and a pension system that rewards long, uninterrupted careers and is not really built for how women live their lives. So she's still working at 72, wondering what she did wrong. My daughter Alexa, who is 19. Yes, I did call my daughter Alexa, everyone. Before the Amazon, Alexa was popular. I'm not sure she's forgiven me for that. She is at the other end of life's journey, currently living our best life as a student, I would add, but about to embark on her life and she's got no idea that a massive gender pension gap exists between men and women. And then there's me, somewhere in the messy middle, no one can see me. So I can tell you all, I'm 21, but clearly I'm not. I am 52 and I am trying to navigate some of my life choices. So two divorces, periods of self employment and I am a career pension professional. So for the rest of my career I want to help as many women in the UK as possible retire with more money. We all work so hard throughout our careers. I want us to be able to enjoy it when we retire and go on the longest holiday of our lives because that's what retirement is.
Speaker B:Thanks so much for your introduction. I think it's really powerful to hear a bit more about your personal story. I met you obviously at the National Allyship Summit that Male Allies UK hosted. I heard you talk looking at your keynote and I decided that this was the reason I needed to get that energy on the podcast for the one because it's such an important topic. And I 100% agree that if we don't make pensions personal, it's a nasty little thing that nobody really wants to care about. So I'd really like to get an understanding from your kind of perspective. What are the biggest misconceptions people have about pensions?
Speaker A:I mean, there's lots of misconceptions. You only need to go onto Instagram now and you will see and I use inverted commas for influencers giving out misinformation about about pensions. So there's a few things that I would probably draw upon that pensions are complicated. Now I understand where that comes from. People get their annual benefit statement, there's lots of jargon in it, there are abstract numbers in it and people can't really relate that to their personal circumstances. So it goes in the dusty drawer of doom, or it goes in the big bag of pension paperwork. Everyone's got one and it's just put in the too difficult box. However, if we can start to break it down in small bite sized chunks, we can make it far more simple. And really all a pension is is a tool for you to enjoy your later life. It's a future income for you when you're not in employment anymore. So it's in all our interests to take an interest. I don't know about you, but I want to be sipping a cocktail on a hot beach, enjoying the longest holiday of my life. So I'm really on a mission to try and reduce the complexity that is around pensions. And it's really just a savings pot for your future. So that's the first thing. I think the second thing is pensions are BO well, so is your retirement going to be if you don't take an interest in it? You know, we can make pensions come to life when we Start to envisage what it will mean for our future self. And then pensions are only for people in the industry. Pensions are for everybody. When do you get the option to take advantage of free money? Free money is what your employer will pay into your pension for your future. That is such an added benefit. If we were in any other industry, people would bite your hand off for free money. Yet somehow in the pensions industry, it's met with skepticism. So there's lots, there's lots of myths, which I hope we'll get into, trying to demystify some in the next kind of 20, 30 minutes or so, 100% we will.
Speaker B:I think that the topic that you just touched on there, the making it feel quite complex and it's easy to put off, it's something that I'll worry about five years down the line. I'm just buying a house, I'm getting married, I'm getting. I'm having babies. Like, there are so many things that make people put off their pension. What's your take on why does it matter so much to start early? And why is it important for people, and especially also women, to start earlier rather than later with their pensions?
Speaker A:What I think might be useful now is to frame, and we're maybe skipping ahead a bit, but I think this is important because then we can talk about life moments. So, in the UK at the moment, a woman currently retires, on average with 113,000 pounds less in her pension savings pot than a man. And what that means is a man has secured an income roughly of £19,000 a year in retirement, and a woman has only secured£13,000 a year. So every single year, she is bearing that£6,000 less in her pensions pot because of something called the gender pension gap, which is just the difference between what a man and a woman has. So there's lots of reasons for that. And that's why starting early is hugely, hugely important, because the earlier you start, the less you need to do, because the free money, the tax relief and the compound interest or compound investment growth will do the heavy lifting for you. So, for example, and Scottish widows do a women in retirement report. We can maybe link it in the comments. So we've been researching the women of the UK's preparedness for retirement for 22 years. Progress is happening, but it's far slower than I would like. So we know that 36% of women, so over a third of women, are on track for retirement poverty. And what that looks like is a retirement of staying at home, no foreign holidays, no car, 95 pounds a week on food, roughly, might have gone down a little bit this year, but as a G7 nation, to tell me that over a third of women who have worked hard, their whole lives, paid and unpaid work, are on track for a retirement of relying on other people feels really unacceptable to me. So when we think about how can we break the cycle cycle and how can we be the generation that closes the gender pension gap? This is where the importance of starting early comes in. Because starting at 18 instead of 22 with pension contributions just assuming median earnings. So I'm not assuming big high earners could make a difference of about £48,000 to women's retirement. Now, if we put that into context, that the gender pension gap's about 113, surely through starting at 18 rather than 22 on first pound of earnings, you nearly half the gap. So that's, that's the best example I can give you of starting early. Other little, like bits of information I would love the audience to remember is if a woman puts in 1.15% extra throughout her career, it can negate her being off for five years. So the importance of little things done early on top of the habit stacking, we all know if something becomes automated and it's part of our habit we don't think about it can really make a huge difference to close someone's own personal gender pension gap.
Speaker B:Yeah, and I'm thinking there as well, what's probably needed is a lot more education early on around what that means, because, I mean, I remember school and compound interest calculations and all that. That's not definitely not my strongest subject, but if you kind of display it in a very early or in a very easy way, then people will see, or especially women will see the effect it has. So for me, I'm wondering where is the honor, the onus on organizations to do more education, but also where potentially the onus on women's school systems to do more education around this early on to then guarantee that you do not have 30% of women close to poverty in their pension age? Because in the end there is something we need to plug the hole. And how could that be done earlier so that people and women are actually aware of what they could do and how they could kind of minimize that gap?
Speaker A:There's so much in your comments there, so I'll try and address some of the points. You're right. So if we think about this at a very high level, we've got three spheres of responsibility that all need to work together, or we'll never close the gap. So you're right, we've got policy and legislation that's both around education in schools and what levers can the government pull to increase pension adequacy then? You're right. We've got employers and trustees and providers. And how can they get the right information into the hands of their employees at the right time? Because nobody wants blanket pension education. People want in their daily scroll and their daily newsfeed. They want it at a life stage that's personalized to them. So that's the second thing. And then the third thing is we do have a healthy dose of personal responsibility. We need to take out the too difficult box out of the dusty drawer and start to think about what it's going to mean for our future. So to your point about what can we do more? If I think about what I've done as a parent for Alexa now, I've done a lot of things wrong. Probably calling her Alexa was one if she was on this with me. But I've done an awful lot of things right and we have had really small conversations since she was 14, she's 19 now and her financial awareness and her ability to make financial decisions is far more developed than mine ever was. So that's cultural. If I had asked my dad what he'd earned, I would have been sent to my bed for asking him something personal. I've tried to really turn that on its head and I'm very transparent with Alexa because I've been a single mum for quite a lot of her life. She knows what my payslip looks like. We go through my pay slip. So she understands tax, national insurance, pension contributions, share saves, so that when she goes out into the real world after she's finished our performing arts degree, so dancing about for six hours a day, you know, fabulous. She will have a real good understanding of the components of her wage slip and that's important. And then her understanding and the difference between holding your money in cash and then investing it. But we need to get the parents to have that conversation in the absence of any policy interventions. But what we have done, and most providers will do, but what Scottish widows have done, and I'm really proud of this, is We've taken our 22 years of research and one, we've created a kind of one stop shop website called Invest in youn which has real bite sized pieces of information on, on it. But then secondly, we've taken things like 4 in 10 women told us that they didn't financially plan for their career break and 51% then felt they struggled financially when they were off. So we need to get these blind spots and we need to provide solutions for these women so we can close that gap. So we've now got a career break modeler that anybody can use. You don't have to be a Scottish Widows member and you can go on there and model. What would it look like If I took 18 months out who. And to my point earlier about making pensions personal, if we can get personal proof points in the hands of people when they need it, we can really help people with that personal responsibility part. So I wish I'd have that. When I was off having Alexa, I had no clue I was living day to day, which a lot of new parents are. So we feel really strongly about that translation from insight to action and solution. So really long answer, but I hope that gives you what you need. So there are lots of good organisations and to any employers listening, engage with your pension providers provider because this is their day job, they are, you know, consumed with engaging employees to help give them a better financial future when they retire. So there's lots of good free resources for people to use.
Speaker B:I think also it's obviously in a situation where you have children, it's important to kind of educate and bring your children up with that knowledge. But I would also say as someone who doesn't have and doesn't want children speaking to your friends, to your peers, what their experience is, what the potential is like in different sectors and different organizations to get a better understanding what's out there and. And also to just demystify that discussion around. This is something we don't really talk about because it's something that everyone has probably a lot don't know much about, but it's getting that discussion going and kind of learning from what other people do and learning as well what the options are are really because the more you. And I think for me a big thing as well is nowadays with the sorts of AI help and obviously what you've mentioned there, the invest in you that Scottish widow too, there will be other availability like these from, from other providers as well. But using AI and using these tools to get an idea of where you are and where you could be and where you need to be to really discuss your situation with yourself. Calling your friends.
Speaker A:Absolutely right. And peer to peer learning is hugely, hugely important. So when we think, you know, we're a 200 year old pension company, right, how are we going to engage with Alexa, for example, she wants to hear from her peers whether that's on Instagram, Reddit, Snapchat, wherever it is. She wants to. That's how she wants to learn and that's her safe space because she feels vulnerable enough to be able to ask the questions. So that, that's one thing. And the second thing is those kitchen table conversations, we can never overestimate the importance of them. So, for example, and I think I maybe mentioned this when you and I met in my keynote, my nephew started as a graduate apprentice at an entry level job, but a good salary, and he said to me, auntie Susan, I don't want to join the pension scheme because £83amonth is too expensive. Now, if he had let that go and gone on with his life, he would not have been aware that his employer was double matching. So he put in 5%, his employer put in 10%, so his 83 pounds was turning into 312 every month. So he was getting access to 229 pounds of free money every single month, including tax relief from age 18, 19 to his retirement date. Now, I'm pleased to say that after my head exploded and we had a long chat, he's in the pension scheme now and I was actually speaking to Mum the other day and she said, I've checked, his pension statement came in. So we're maybe what, a year and a half down the line now. His pension's got over £5,000 in it now, he wouldn't have known that had he not had the foresight to make a comment to me. So we must normalise these conversations. I can't stress that enough. Ask the question, talk to our friends in a trusted environment because that will make the difference between him having an adequate retirement to a retirement of financial freedom. So it's just so, so important.
Speaker B:And it's really interesting as well because we all feel it. And the 83 quid, when you just start out in your career, it is obviously a lot of money. But if you probably compare the 83 pound a month over a year and a half that you were just saying, you would get nowhere close to that five grand. And obviously without the tax relief as well, even if you self invested it somewhere else, there would have been no chance to get to that same amount that he's now got on his pension statement. And obviously there are options kind of to self invest as well and not saying that this isn't an option as well. We're going to talk about kind of as well people in a minute that have maybe fallen a bit behind or not maybe looked at it so Much, but there are options. But I think the importance really is as well what you touched on, that free money, the tax relief, the employer contributions, and they make a huge difference over the years that you accumulate them.
Speaker A:Huge. And I think for 18 to 22 year olds is, without getting too technical, auto enrolment is the government legislation which means every employee in the UK has to provide a pension scheme. Now, you're not auto enrolled until you're 22, but you can opt in for 18 and that's the four years that can really make a difference. Generally speaking, while you're still living at home, your parents probably aren't charging you digs or if they are, they're putting it away in a wee pot for you that you don't know about. So get into the good habit of saving and then you'll never think about it and it will make such a difference to your future. So again, any parents listening, please speak to your young team about it because it will make such a difference to their financial future.
Speaker B:Yeah, 100%. Now, we, we touched before, obviously we have mostly women, but we have people who are taking career breaks, whether that is having children or it could be other absences. Exactly. How do I get back on track? I'm in my mid-30s, mid-40s maybe. I haven't really paid much attention, maybe done the minimum that I was required to do because it's good practice to do that. If I then start to decide, now is the time to look at my pension.
Speaker A:By the way, there are three main components to your retirement income. So let's forget about house saving things and investments. Let's just think about three pension components. So the first thing is your state pension. This is not an ad, but I love the HMC app. The HMRC app gives me three pieces of information really, really quickly. It tells me when my state pension age is, it tells me how much I'm going to to get from the state every month. And it also tells me, do I have any national insurance breaks. Now why that's important is state pension this year is twelve and a half thousand pounds. That is not too shabby. That's going to make up the cornerstone of a lot of people in the UK's retirement income. To qualify for that, you need 35 years of national insurance contributions. For the women on the call who have had time out, the HMRC app gives you a year on year breakdown and it will be a tick that you have provided enough income. Income or there will be a gap. And that gap could be if you've been off for caring for parents, childcare or travelling, make sure that you've got your NI credit, that's hugely important. And even if you're a high earner or your partner's a high earner and you've opted out of receiving child benefit, for example, for Those earning between 60 and 80,000, make sure you've got your NI credit. So, first thing, download the HMRC app, understand when your state pension is. It's not moving from 66 to 67, and understand how much of that £2,500 you're going to get. Yes, there may be changes in the future to state pension, but it will take an awful long time for those changes to come through. So for people, for example, my age, it's unlikely that state pension will be unchanged and it goes up by inflation every year. So, first thing cornerstone, understand your state pigeon. Secondly, there is £31 billion of lost pensions in the UK now. But that just blows my mind.£31 billion sitting with providers that people don't know they have. I mean, if you think about it, like finding 20 pounds down the back of the sofa, but much, much better. If we all think about, we've maybe had name changes, we've changed address, companies have amalgamated, we've left employers. On average, people have between nine and 11 jobs. There's 3.1 billion pots that are lost, which means an average of nine and a half thousand pounds per potential. Please take a minute to go back through your CV, your LinkedIn profile. Make sure that for every employment you've had, you have a pot of money allocated to you for that employment. That's hugely important. You know, I don't know if anyone watched the Martin Luce program, but you had someone in the audience who'd found £45,000, huge amount of money and that money is out there. There's also pension tracing service and we've got pension dashboard coming later next year, which will go away and find everyone's pension and bring it back to them using their NI number. So that's the second component. So you've got state pension, you've got any previous workplace pension and then you've got your current workplace pension. And the best thing I can say about that is make sure you understand the structure of that. So if you're paying 5% and your employer pays 10%, make sure, if your household budget allows, and you can do this as a family exercise, make sure that both partners are maximising the free money from the employer lawyer. So then when you've got the three components, you understand what you've got. The questions that we get asked more than any other questions are what have I got? Is it enough? And what can I do next to get me closer to where I need to be? So if you do those three things that will give you a really clear picture of what you've got. That's the starting point. I'll give you a lot of information there, but hopefully it's quite straightforward. State pension, previous pension has workplace financial.
Speaker B:And that's the good thing as well by it being a podcast, people can re listen to it, they can pause, they can look at one thing and then they can tackle the next. Because I think sometimes all this live admin sometimes gets a really. It's really exhausting and there's so many other things. There's the next holiday to plan, there is a child school play, there is something else but I think it makes sense and it's all becoming more and more digital anyway. So following these steps should be hopefully getting more and more easy for people.
Speaker A:Definitely. And I'm on Instagram as well. I'm on Instagram as real Susan Hope so please do follow me if you like the chat. And I just did a post last night actually around a supermarket receipt. Julia, I don't know about you but I will go through my supermarket receipt with a fine tooth comb. Right. God forbid that my meal deal is listed as individual items. I am going to, you know, kick up a fuss about that. But the level of detail we will look at over a supermarket receipt and we push our pension, our main source of income when we're going to stop working, we push it to the side need. It's the ultimate act of self care to bring that out into the light and start to think about what it's going to mean for your financial future. I completely understand life admin get too much. But the only person you're hurting by not looking at this is yourself. And I see that with my mum still working at 72. So it's just hugely important. Make a date. Make a pension date with yourself. Fifteen minutes, you know, or if you're part of a couple, make, you know, have a pension date night. Probably why I'm single. Nobody wants a pension date night, do they? Probably why I am divorced twice. But you know, have a pension date, almost have a pension amnesty. Get all your stuff out on the table and plan. You will find money you didn't know you had and you will feel more in control at the end of it.
Speaker B:And I mean we're having a Pension podcast, lunch date here.
Speaker A:Love that.
Speaker B:I think it's also really, really important what you just mentioned that talk to your partner about it because there is differences in income, there is differences in responsibilities, in looking after parents, after the children, everything. Again, it's having that transparency and knowing where you're going to be off in a couple of years, when what's going to happen to you financially. And that's why I was so keen to get, to get you on that podcast, because I think it's so important to share that message and you have a very good way of breaking it down easily so that people can start taking action.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker B:I think one thing as well that I have heard about quite a lot happening is people up making some decisions along their life when they need money for something and then maybe take it out and don't realize the impact that that might have on their pensions. So what are kind of sometimes the decisions that you've seen throughout your career that really either strengthen or seriously impact long term pension outcomes?
Speaker A:We've touched on some of them. But to summarise, starting as early as possible is hugely important. I can't overstate that enough. Starting early while you're living at maximizing the employer contribution is so important. If you are having a balancing act, which so many households in the UK are, I certainly have done it at times. The temptation to opt out is so high and I've done it myself, I'm ashamed to admit. But if you really need to do that, do that from a position of knowledge, understand exactly what you are giving up. Because the last thing you want to do is just kick that financial resilience problem down the road. Because what we see for women who are older, and I include myself in this, is the impact of divorce on older women. The impact of menopause, the impact of a lack of joint financial planning when you're in a partner are all really important. So if you can get yourself in a really strong position, almost shield yourself so that whatever happens, you know, you have that financial cushion. Another thing I hear all the time decision is, oh, I'll leave that to my partner. Oh, my partner deals with all of that. You know, nearly one in two marriages end in divorce. I don't want to be the you, you know, the pensions lady of doom, but it's really important that women have a very clear picture of their pensions and their partner's pensions because divorce is a point and it's probably a whole other podcast, but six out of 10 women that we spoke to did not talk about pensions and divorce, which left them worse off to the tune of about£77,000. It's a huge amount of money. A lack of joint financial planning can leave a woman financially vulnerable. Women live longer. Women have smaller folks pots. If the partner dies, the males generally tend to have bigger pots, but they die younger. There's lots of things going on. So to summarise, start as early as you possibly can, understand the impact of opting out and even inquire if you can opt down, not out, and do not stick your head under the covers about this. Make sure that you've got a clear picture of your financial assets. And I would say open banking really helps that. So I can see my bank account, my pension all in the one place. You know, I feel really quite affluent some days and my pension feels like it's mine right now. I've made mistakes, but I am really focused now on I want that we talk about a Butland, Barcelona or Barbados retirement. I really want that Barbados retirement and I'm willing to do what it takes to get myself as close to that as I can. But you've got to really think about making it personal. So it's a balance between, you know, your future self and living for the here and now. And I understand that's a difficult one.
Speaker B:100%, I think. Before we finish off, I'd like to ask a couple of clarify your questions actions as well. What's the one myth about pensions that you'd love to debunk?
Speaker A:They're owned by the government and you don't control your own workplace pension. That the government have control over your workplace pension. I see that on Instagram all the time. I've actually done a post about it. Your workplace pension is yours. It's got your policy number, it's got your name on it and it is yours. Yes, there are parameters around when you can take the income and how it will be taxed, but there are parameters around every vehicle Isaac does buy to less. So that is yours. The state pension yet is a contributory amount of money, which is run by the government. But your workplace pension is yours. Owned by you.
Speaker B:Amazing. What would you say is one word to describe how people should feel about their pension? That was an easy one.
Speaker A:It's your future fund fund. That's what I like to call it. Let's stop calling it pensions. It's your future, you fund. Your future fund. It's going to be the longest, you know, we could be in retirement for, you know, 20, 30 years. We want to have fun with it. We've worked so hard.
Speaker B:Yeah, I totally agree. And the last one, what is the one Pension Tip? After hearing this podcast, after looking at your Instagram what you would like people to act on today, understand what you've
Speaker A:got, understand your three components, understand your state pension, find all your workplace pensions from previous employment and make sure you're maximizing employer contribution from your workplace pension. If you have all, if you have a clear picture of all of these, you can start to really build the type of retirement you want.
Speaker B:Amazing. Susan. I've really enjoyed the chat today. For our listeners when this podcast is launched, it might have been happened already, but we have on our one events all the recorded sessions as well. There is a session happening with Better for Money around pensions as well. So if you enjoyed the topic of this podcast, have a look. Either sign up if it's launched before the event happens or if it's after the event had happened. You'll find the recording. And really for me it's personally giving me another kick up of the *** to look at my pension even a bit more. So thank you very much for joining me today and make sure to follow Susan on Instagram as well. I find your profile is really helpful and it's giving loads of tips around how you can do better for your own pension. So thank you very much for joining me today.
Speaker A:Just to bring me on, thanks to everyone.