The number of female entrepreneurs in the UK has hit an all-time high at 1.7m, but a fair few of them are not saving at all for retirement.
Insurance provider Scottish Widows released its Women and Retirement report and found 35% of this cohort are saving nothing.
That is almost 600,000 women who will have no savings to fall back on in later life.
Less than half of self‐employed women (46%) save the minimum recommended level, compared to 56% of women who are employed by a company or organisation.
These findings illustrate the success of auto‐enrolment in raising pension participation rates among female employees.
Polarisation
There is a wide variation in business earnings of female entrepreneurs, which may explain the difference in savings.
Four-out-of-five self‐employed women (80%) who save inadequately earn below £20,000 ($25,666, €23,318) a year.
Jackie Leiper, pensions director at Scottish Widows, said: “A growing number of women are taking charge of their careers by launching their own businesses or working as freelancers – 700,000 have set up on their own since 2005, and 1.7 million women are now self‐employed.
“This raises real concerns when we consider that women are historically under‐prepared for retirement and that self‐employed women do not benefit from the safety net of auto‐enrolment, which has helped boost female employees’ savings since its introduction.
“It’s clear that reform is needed to drive a step‐change in retirement preparations for the self‐employed, in the same way that auto‐enrolment has for employees in the workplace.”
