The investment platform found that many adults are saving for retirement outside of pensions, using a mix of cash savings, stocks and shares ISAs, buy-to-let property, and other investments to build long-term wealth.
While this shows broader engagement with retirement planning, Interactive Investor highlighted a “worrying” over-reliance on low-yield cash for long-term goals. The research revealed that people are more than twice as likely to save for retirement in cash (43%) than via stocks and shares ISAs (21%).
Among Interactive Investor’s customers, this trend is even stronger, with 78% saving outside pensions compared to 57% of the general population.
Interactive Investor senior manager Camilla Esmund attributed these findings to growing pension disillusionment, fueled partly by ongoing policy and regulatory uncertainty.
“The pension landscape has been in the spotlight over the past year, especially ahead of the Autumn Budget,” she said. “Speculated reforms have raised concerns about pensions’ future role in long-term financial resilience, but this isn’t a new issue.”
Esmund argued that repeated pension rule changes have steadily eroded public confidence, discouraging long-term saving.