In recognition of the many complex financial decisions that employees face at-retirement, INEOS - one of the world's largest chemical producers, recently rolled out a financial education programme for employees approaching retirement, with the help of specialist workplace financial education and guidance provider, WEALTH at work.
Daniel Moore, Group Pensions Manager, INEOS, discusses the background behind this and the steps it’s taken to help their employees become financially secure in the lead up to and at-retirement.
Daniel Moore, Group Pensions Manager, INEOS comments; “We brought WEALTH at work in to educate our employees in everything financial for their retirement and to give them a good financial grounding so that they are able to ask the right questions, in order to make informed choices about their future.”
Moore explains; “After all as an employer, you’ve provided a large part of an employee’s pension, so the last thing you want to happen is for that to disappear inappropriately, either through a scam or poor decisions being made. So I think that by giving our employees the tools to enable them to be able to work through all of the challenges they may face is good because you don’t want to lose the investment you’ve made in your employees over the years.”
He adds; “The feedback we’ve received from employees following our financial education programme has been very positive. It has actually exceeded my expectations. We’ve had some very high scores on the feedback forms that employees fill out after an intervention and we’ve had a good level of engagement with all seminars being fully booked.”
Jonathan Watts-Lay, Director, WEALTH at work, comments; “We know that often mistakes are made at-retirement such as individuals getting scammed out of their retirement savings or paying far more tax than they need to, and those mistakes can have very negative consequences.”
He adds; “Many employers and Trustees want to understand what measures they can put in place to help their employees and pension scheme members avoid these situations and make the most of their retirement savings.”
Watts-Lay continues; “One of the most important elements of this is providing all employees and members with support so that they can understand the advantages and disadvantages of the options available to them, before they take any income from their pensions or indeed any other sources of retirement income. This support should include financial education and guidance, and regulated financial advice for more complex decisions.”
He comments; “It’s great that INEOS are taking such positive steps and leading the way when it comes to supporting their employees to achieve financial security at-retirement. I am pleased to see that employees at INEOS have rated our seminars so positively and that the take-up of them has been so successful.”
