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SME employees losing out on pension plans

Published On 11 January 2007 at 10:37:43

Fewer than one in five SME employees and bosses are signed up to a company pension plan, according to one survey.

Unicom asked SME owners and managers whether they had company pension plans in place for themselves and employees.

Nearly three in ten admitted that neither they nor their workers were signed up to a company scheme, while 45 per cent of SME owners said they were signed up to a pension scheme but not their employees, Shout 99 reports.

This means that 83 per cent of SME employees will have no employer-based pension contribution to draw on in retirement, Unicom warned.

"Small business owners and their staff are amongst the hardest working but also most vulnerable; one of our previous surveys indicated that small businesses felt they were not receiving enough help from the government as it was," Unicom's operations director Chris Earle added.

The UK's burgeoning pension crisis has come in for increasing attention from the government in recent years, with concerns mounting that many employees are ill-prepared for the costs of retirement.

 

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