Are you saving enough in your pension?

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0:34After your trial, you'll save an extra£5 a quarter on the subscription, which is exclusive to Making Money listeners. And that's moneyweek.com forward slash money. But there's a link in the description if you just want to click that. Lots of people aren't saving at the right level or they're saving at the kind of minimum levels. You don't want to kind of get to retirement and then suddenly go, oh, I thought I was on track. Ouch. Joe Dabrowski is Deputy Head of Policy at Pensions UK, formerly the PLSA. They're the people that come up with the retirement living standards, but they also work behind the scenes to influence pension policy.

1:06Do you think we need to concede that a lot of people aren't going to get the moderate as they are right now? It's unlikely that I think the state pension level will increase significantly to kind of uplift people. That's a change that I think we could do that now. I wouldn't disagree that we've waited too long.

1:27I would know you as the PLSA but I think you've just been through a rebrand haven't you? Yeah we've just changed to be known as Pensions UK It's a big domain that I love a rebrand they used to call me T-Money my old Instagram was T-Finessing my new Instagram is T-Is-Making-Money so follow me also been called CryptoPappy CryptoPappy so yeah rebranding is a I think it's very good makes it a bit more clear for people yeah i think it sort of does what it says on the tin a little bit more yeah these have more names than p diddy this guy more baby oil as well more controversies

2:06welcome welcome to the podcast um yeah what why why the name change uh we wanted to kind of make sure that it was kind of clear who we are there's a lot going on in the pension sector at the moment just kind of establishing you know ourselves as a kind of voice of pensions we're a hundred and two-year-old organization so you know we've been through several name changes over different times but this is all about kind of making making it really clear about what we stand for who we stand for on a kind of mission which is about helping people have a better income in retirement we'll get into that mission and and you as an organization but i think most people would know you who watched my content through the living standards which are a set of guidelines about how much people might need in retirement have you got those figures yeah yeah I've got the figures so the retirement living standards talk about kind of the expenditure that you might need in retirement so we know that people find it kind of quite hard to think about the kind of future and kind of you know how much is it going to cost me to to live in retirement um when we kind of first thought of the kind of concept we were considering actually you know how do you get listening to people how do you kind of make it a bit more like your five a day people kind of know those refrains and so the kind of living standards is based to help people get that kind of picture of kind of what it looks like at different levels we've got comfortable uh which is really tends to be kind of for higher earners moderate which is most people and kind of minimum and we're looking at um levels for a couple and i think we we moved to talking a little bit more about a couple recently most people 70 percent of people when they're going to retirement live as part of a a two-person household i mean that could be your could be your wife a spouse something else family um so when we think about that kind of level of people we're looking at sort of at the minimum level about 21 600 for two people um for moderate 43 900 and comfortable 60 600 and comfortable is you know the upper end so most people are going to be minimum moderate that's where most people's kind of ambition should be and where their expenditure will be.

4:12And what about single? Single figures for the minimum are£13 ,400. For moderate,£31 ,700. And the comfortable, £43 ,900. How much was moderate again? Sorry. Moderate is£43 ,900 for a couple. Between two people. It doesn't sound that moderate though. But take into account some of that includes the state pensions. The state pension is£12 ,000 per person so it'd be 24 covering that and then um the standard kind of you know it's built by talking to real people kind of a bit like we are here kind of get people in a room we ask them to essentially um you know people from across the nation different ages different ages in a room imagine kind of what's your retirement gonna look like make them think about their house you know their lifestyle you know look around yourself what is your what's your kitchen look like you know have you you know got a car how often are you you traveling what are you doing with your family and friends where are you eating where are you shopping and all of that adds up to the kind of basket and then we look at the basket of goods for the different levels and that kind of tells you what the sums are but does this assume that you own your property at the moment it assumes you do own your property well it doesn't include housing costs yeah um which is very big for a lot of people it's big for a lot of people but a lot of people today um and we update the standards regularly but a lot of people today own their house when they go into retirement so about 80 percent of people own their house going into retirement so the costs for housing um are a small proportion for for the other part of the population some of that might be covered by housing benefit or other support but it is a fact so and we kind of keep the standards kind of under review we have housing calculators that sit alongside the standards and i guess the other thing is housing costs vary enormously across the uk so it's very difficult to kind of have a common measure for housing costs so you know in london versus um say in scarborough or wherever it will be you know the costs can be incredibly different and therefore people need to just kind of factor that in a little bit more you know for their circumstances and i guess you You know, the wider thing for the standard is they give you kind of three levels to think about, but you tailor them for how they suit your needs because you might want three holidays a year.

6:34You might want one. I feel that might be the other way around. Wise man. Who are they for? Who are they aimed at? Like what is the purpose of them, would you say? Yeah, they're aimed at everybody. and we want everybody to kind of have that kind of clear view of actually what might my lifestyle look like in retirement. We want everybody to be able to think actually yeah I know roughly what the kind of three levels are that I need to think about where I am what level works for me. We want people to use their provider. You can kind of log on to most of your providers all the main providers use the retirement living standards and we're hoping that they get built into other things like the pension dashboard or the maps uh help and advice service but so you can just go on you can think actually you know where am i what am i on track what what what is my lifestyle going to look like am i on track and i'll log into your your provider site or in the future on the dashboard and think you know am i am i kind of about right do i want to do more what other choices can i make do you worry about a sort of bias in the fact that the data you collect is from a cohort that are probably the richest retirees ever, the boomer generation say.

7:46And then you're saying to people, oh, this is kind of where you want to aim, but they may never be able to get to that level. For example, you say 70 % of people own their own home outright or whatever. We know that projections are that as much as 50 % of people might arrive at retirement without owning a home. Or by 2050, they think that retirees will be 10 % worse off than the ones today. So it's almost like we're using the gold standard to create the model of what is normal. Yeah, I mean, we have the focus groups to understand what kind of real people are thinking about. We use the kind of Joseph Rowntree Foundation on Loughborough University evidence, which kind of got a very broad cross spectrum of people.

8:28But it's also about, it's an explanation of the expenditure for a lifestyle. lifestyle so um i mean that doesn't necessarily change when you look at the the levels within the lifestyle kind of how it breaks down you know what might i be spending on my shopping what i'm you know am i cutting my own hair or am i going to the salon am i buying a car every five years or running it into the ground and then taking the train all of those things are factored in and they kind of reflect people's real choices i when i look at the levels um you know they don't look like the kind of unrealistic expectations for people certainly at the kind of minimum and moderate you know when you're thinking about what what is it people want in their life they might want one holiday a year as a minimum in retirement they might want to you know shop and live reasonably and have a couple of meals out every couple of months I don't think that's unrealistic for people I think the real question is obviously how do we make sure that people have enough savings in retirement to afford those sorts of things I think that's a different question about the kind kind of levels of adequacy we've got in this country at the moment, certainly for many.

9:37And our work and lots of evidence shows, and hopefully the Pensions Commission that was launched just this week, we'll kind of examine a bit more again, is how do you get people saving at levels which are going to get them close to this level of retirement, if that's what they want, and those kind of replacement rates? Yeah, I think 50 % of people are not paying into a private pension was the figure that I saw banded about. and I highly suspect that the government's kind of reforms will be, let's whack the age up a little bit on state pension because, you know, we can't touch the triple lock. Yeah, I think the figure for 50 % might have been for the self-employed.

10:13Okay. So I thought that was one in five. It seems to have shot up a lot. Yeah, the level of self-employed has changed quite a lot in the last decade. So, you know, we've seen the kind of enormous explosion of kind of gig working and insecure work. Some of that will alter as part of the kind of employment bill that's going through presently. But for most people who are in a workplace, nearly all of them are in an AE, automatic enrollment scheme. We've seen millions of people come into that system. Problem is still lots of people aren't saving at the right level or they're saving at the kind of minimum levels.

10:45We know there's been a cost of living crisis. We know there's been the great financial crisis, too. There's lots of headwinds for people to worry about. but we do need to make sure that people are thinking actually if I'm going to have any form of reasonable level of lifestyle in retirement what does that look like for me and how do I save to get there yeah I think you know the 50 % figure if 10 % of people opt out of the workplace scheme which which they do you also have people that don't work 10 % are economically inactive you're already at 20 % of people there you have people that are part-time workers you get a lot of the population and not paying into those schemes even though I can see that auto-enrollment has been a massive success and I get what you're saying the standards aren't saying that you know they're just like a spending pattern and saying if we this is what we would call moderate do you think we need to concede that a lot of people aren't going to get the moderate as they are right now I think quite a lot of people aren't on track for moderate presently certainly you know my generation Gen X for example and gen z and others might be might be more stretched too um there is a question of how do you address that um some of that is making sure that people are aware you don't want to kind of get to retirement and then suddenly go oh i thought i was on track ouch i'm not and we know that you know roughly 70 percent of people don't have a kind of plan presently for what they're going to get at retirement or their retirement planning more generally there's a lot of questions about how people kind of interact they're thinking with that and say you know am i going to get some inheritance from my family house or something else.

12:17There's lots of things that people kind of weigh up. But we do need to kind of get back to thinking, okay, what is a reasonable level of retirement spending for me? How does that fit against my current lifestyle? And what can I do about it to make sure I get there either now or, you know, if I'm in mid-career or, you know, at the beginning of your career? And that might be that you don't have the level of contributions from your employer, from yourself at the beginning, but you've got a plan to kind of get up there um potentially as you kind of progress through your through your career and you know lots of other things to factor in you know when do you start a family how do you buy a house all of these things it's real complicated yeah i saw the the ifs said that when they'd consider housing costs which is obviously a big consideration a big cost for working families i think 80 percent fall short of the moderate standard in there whilst working so is it is it too much to expect that they then suddenly fall into the moderate once they stop i think 35 % of working households don't reach the minimum standard as well.

13:18So I think most people should reach the minimum standard if they're getting a full state pension over their career. Is it just short? Is the minimum standard 13k for a single person? Minimum standard is for a single person 13 ,400 and it's 12k now for state pensions. So if you're putting in minimum levels of contribution over your career, the kind of three and five percent split that we've got in AE at the moment for DC schemes, then you will get the difference for sure. The question is, if you're then looking to get to that moderate space, you might be making some choices between mixtures of moderate and minimum lifestyle.

13:59But they're not supposed to be kind of flat rate targets. They reflect people's needs and people will adjust them. I think I said at the start, obviously, about the richest retirees ever. I think it's worth saying, And I think 13 % of retirees at the minute only rely on state pensions, so fall below the minimum standard. By a few hundred quid, but they're below it. There's a lot of retirees today as well that aren't on the new state pension, on the old state pension, which provides a lot less than the new state pension. Yeah. So would you encourage people to use the standards as almost kind of like a pick and mix where they go into it and go, oh I would like a retirement like this and this and this and build their own standard as such rather than rigidly go I want to be moderate or yeah I think definitely don't think of think it think of it as a sort of um a ballpark you know am I going to be roughly here or there and some of that will reflect your kind of current income and your income expectations over the kind of course of your career um but then you know a lot of the you know if you're logging in with your with your provider or onto you know a tool that's available somewhere a lot of that will allow you to flex so you know i'm going to spend more money on my shopping or i'm going to spend more money on my uh holidays or my uh car or my travel or whatever else so you know adjust it to to suit your needs it's not kind of one size fits all for sure so your organization you said you're very old i didn't realize you were that old are you is are you funded by the pension providers themselves is that is that how you yeah so we're we're a not-for-profit organization yeah um and our members are primarily pension funds um uh who contribute to us by you know kind of membership fee um we've run events and other things but but that's who we are we kind of you know for uh for retirees for savers that's our kind of primary focus and you know we we are not for profit kind of pays for ourselves through subscriptions okay cool so the the um the point that you made around increasing contributions across across the uk i think if we look at superannuation the australian scheme they're about 12 aren't they but they they have a means tested state pension so you need a higher contribution on the private side do you have a view on or do your members or the people who fund the organization have a view on what a sensible contribution rate is for a UK model where we have a state pension?

16:25Yeah, so by and large, we think about 12 % is going to be right for most people as a contribution with a mix of a split between the employer and the employee. Now, the Pension Commission, which was launched this week, will have a look at kind of what does adequacy look like for most people, what are the savings rates and how to kind of increase it. We think probably the AE system we got at the moment will need to develop to be more flexible. certainly it will probably need to be more flexible of increases and rates arise for persistent low earners so if i'm consistently on a low income then 12 might mean that i over save and therefore i'm going to have to make you know choices which i'm probably not aware of between you know how i buy my kids shoes or what what food i can put on the table so we think that's that will need flex but um we're doing some work to kind of look at you know if you raise from the levels we've got now um you know what does that look like for different people if you kind of raise it straight to 12 or you flex it or give people more choices how do people's um expectations change i think you know most people though these days will bank to some degree on an app and then you can flick a switch and go i want to put more money here or there daily so we think the system over time will have to adjust to reflect kind of people's wants and needs it can't just be static and so that needs a lot of thinking through and we don't know yet without completing the work to understand what outcomes that will drive for people as well last time we recorded to main you were having some real dramas with your accountant so how's that been going mate they're sacked so drama sorted um they're a big corporate firm um they didn't really reply to my emails very quickly, like took a week or two at times.

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20:24That's Vanta.com forward slash making money. There's a link in the description though, so you can just click that. i want to come back to the points around increasing the the amount that people pay in because i think it's fair for me to say if you're representing the pension industry and the providers is there any conversations internally about what they can do to improve the amount that people have in their pensions reduction of fees stopping uh aggressive lifestyling within portfolios and slapping people in bond funds when they're young you know these stuff that doesn't require extra deposits but still produces bigger returns yeah there's quite a lot that can be done so i guess probably worth saying that most people saving today are saving in an automatic enrollment provider those have got charge caps on them and they the charge cap is is quite low and the actual fees because of the competition in the market the fees that are charged on the caps are in fact more or less half the cap which is already kind of low so the fees are really low the question is how do you make sure you're going to get the maximum bang for your buck.

21:32So there's quite a lot of work going on at the moment to think about combinations of things. So how do you potentially invest in more growth assets? And that might be investing in more private market type assets to get kind of higher growth. You know, 16 or 17 of the largest providers have signed up to try and do that and invest more in the UK too by 2030. The other big question is, at the moment, we've got a system which kind of gets you to retirement in DC and then kind of hands you over or hands you back as well up to you work out what you're doing and the pension schemes bill which is going through at the moment is going to introduce something called guided retirement products which means that actually you'll be more or less defaulted into a product in retirement which means that you won't kind of get this lifestyling switch off it in the same way that has existed previously and also that maybe you'll be invested for longer in different ways which might get you more return so a lot of it's about kind of keeping return seeking assets going for longer keeping those fees down but also helping people to make kind of choices at the same time so do you think there's a an agreement within your the i don't know how how would you call them what would you what would you call the pension company to you what's the relationship clients or fund members yeah the fund members so the yeah the pension providers pension schemes yeah yeah do you think there's a an admission that that lifestyling might not be the way or de-risking people as they approach retirement age is probably not the best way to produce long-term returns well de-risking worked well in the past when you had a system where people kind of passed over to buy an annuity and when annuity rates were good we had a combination of the introduction of freedom of choice and then reductions in the values you were getting from annuities because of the kind of market conditions.

23:25I think it's a recognition that actually keeping people on risk for longer and recognizing that most people have healthy lives for longer and therefore you can carry more investment risk into your 60s or potentially into your early 70s. And that kind of combination of product that allows you to do that kind of at the back end of your or start of your retirement rather than you're kind of saving part of your time will potentially get better outcomes. Some of that's also looking at completely new ways of doing things like collective defined contribution schemes, which they've tried in Europe and particularly in the Netherlands, which is all about a similar thing and also collective investment rather than individual investment.

24:09And what about lifestyle and at the start, I looked at Nest and then they won't call call it de-risking. We had the CEO of the investment here, he said, it's not de-risking, but by my view, putting people in bond funds early on is a form of de-risking. And the justification was we don't want to scare people out of the products. Is that something that could be looked at? Because if I was talking to my son and he was approaching his 20s, I would be saying, you should probably be in equities if you've got a long timeline of investment horizon and you want to potentially maximize returns just understand that it's likely going to be a bit more volatile yeah i think it's i think it's fair i think most funds by and large when you're in that kind of early accumulation phase that kind of early saving phase and across the kind of middle part of the savings journey the largest dc providers they're kind of you know 70 80 percent in kind of risk growth assets there might be some proportion which is in um uh kind of less risky assets or less growth assets, partly kind of a diversification of that risk.

25:14But I think for most people, they're going to be there. Most, every, you know, every large provider goes regularly through a kind of period of revisiting what's their default strategy. Is it appropriate for the membership? Will it change over the next five years? What do I need to update? Some of that, you know, is going to be in this kind of growth agenda that's been agreed by the kind of very largest providers. And I think probably some of that will evolve too, because what we're seeing is a lot of those, you know, when automatic enrolment started, a lot of those funds and schemes were relatively new.

25:50They've grown reasonably quickly, and some of them incredibly quickly over 10 years. And now they've reached kind of a scale which is going to be 25 billion or beyond each, ultimately, by the end of this decade. And so the choices that they can make in their investment portfolios are also going to be different and that means they can offer different things to save us yeah start building wind farms and infrastructure investment especially if the megafund stuff yeah exactly right exactly on that topic the megafunds and is it the accord the pact or the reforms i don't know what they call it anymore mansion house so the mansion house accord is a voluntary commitment uh within with between the industry and the kind of government about looking to by 2030 get 10 % of portfolios into private markets and 5 % in the UK and that's kind of building stuff like wind farms, solar, schools, social housing, all that kind of stuff.

26:45How do your members feel about that as a mandation of assets and you know for me if someone says to me I have to spend 5 % of my money on Mars bars, what if I don't want a Mars bar or what if there's no Mars bars to buy what do I do yeah so the accord is voluntary so everybody's kind of comfortable with that there's a back door though isn't the reserve power that's being introduced in the pension schemes bill is not welcomed by the industry we don't think that a mandation is necessary we think it kind of oversteps the mark in terms of that kind of fiduciary duty that trustees have to invest in the best interest of savers I think government don't want to go there but I think they're kind of also kind of recognizing and a little bit cautious that in the past when there's been discussion about change and investment into the UK it hasn't materialised as quickly as they would like and there's all sorts of reasons for that but we would rather not have this mandation power and we think actually working on a voluntary basis which ensures savers interests are kind of at the forefront of any decisions are going to be important and we want to see some changes in the pension schemes bill and so we're kind of engaging with that live at the moment to try and sort that out.

27:53Because if there was loads of good investments to buy in the UK, your members would be buying them, right? Because they want the best investments internationally or whatever. There's nobody who's, you know, sitting around thinking, oh, there's a great investment, I want to pass it up. And some of that is about getting that kind of pipeline of investable opportunities through. We've had, you know, five or 10 years where there's been a lot of change in government. And that means that priorities and investment decisions, you know, look at HS2, for example, have changed quite a lot at different times.

28:24That means that investors are less sure about what, you know, am I going to invest in this thing or is the rug going to be pulled out from under it at some point? We've seen in the last couple of months from this government, you know, various sets of plans for how they want to support investment into various combinations of regions or types of investment, you know, whether it's the green transition or whether it's other things. if those things kind of come to fruition so that's where you need that kind of combination of government working on that pipeline of stuff to invest in and then also pension funds moving into that space to kind of invest where they can to get outcomes that will be returns but also you know improve the society that we live in one thing that's interesting i was kind of wondering why would pension providers pay for you to exist and you you're clearly quite clued up and have an opinion on the accord is is that the influence that is that another part of the picture that you do for these providers are you speaking to government are lobbying might be the term or yeah so we so we do a lot of different things for members some of it is getting them together to talk about problems shared issues most of our members come you know very much with a kind of philosophy of how do we make sure that people have you know good outcomes and how do we make sure the kind of system works.

29:45Obviously, government is continuously kind of looking to change things. And so some of the things that we do are kind of engage with government, go, actually, you've got a plan to do this. That's really not going to work in this way, because it's going to cost, you know, millions of pounds to implement. There's a shorter way of doing it. Or, you know, what about this? Or instead of that, you know, there's a big reporting burden that you're introducing. So some of it's about kind of making sure that that works. A lot of it and a lot of the focus that we have on our kind of policy work, which is engagement companies, is how do you make outcomes for people better?

30:19Now, is it, you know, you think about does the system have the right kind of governance in place? Are standards high enough on the people that are managing your scheme? And our members want to have a well run system to make sure that people have good outcomes. But it's also positive for them because they want standards to be high. So people who come and participate in the market are of the right quality, the right kinds of people. You know, these are, you know, we're talking about trillions of pounds worth of money in the system. So it needs to be effectively governed and looked after. We need to make sure the kind of systems work.

30:54We also need to make sure that people's outcomes at the end of it are right. And quite a lot of the time, that's also about making sure that legislation is not overly complicated for individuals or for the pension schemes to kind of put together an implement your non-profit are the pension schemes for profit so there's a mixture of provision in the market so you've got most of our members are non-profit their trust based schemes so they essentially sit as a separate trust alongside the employer their only job is essentially to look after the interests of savers make sure they get paid on time make sure that their investments are put away in the right places, that they grow effectively.

31:37Some parts of the market are profit-based and some of that is combinations of different services that they might offer. But some of it is also about, you know, small margins. Okay. Yeah, because, you know, assets under management is where fees are collected. So I know that obviously the agreement is 12%, but we do have that state pension provision, whereas in Australia they don't, but they're at 12%. So I wonder why do we want 12 % when we have state pension as well? Why would we be higher than the Australian system in that sense? And someone in your comments will be cynical and say, your members are incentivised to get assets under management to collect more in fees.

32:16And is that why we're pushing for the 12 %? So the 12 % is all about how do you get those outcomes for individuals? We know that there are controls over the levels of fees that might be charged on investment services. Also, the bulk of the market where most savers are now and kind of AE, they've got a combination of that cap, but also they're run by trust-based schemes who are actually very fierce on the fees that the asset managers that they might use charge them. And I know a lot of them, including Nesta, you mentioned before, will say, actually, we're not paying traditional private equity fees.

32:52Two and 20. Yeah, we're not paying that. We're just not accepting that on behalf of our members. So also as these schemes get to scale, the ability for them to kind of exercise more pressure on the asset managers that they might utilize kind of grows too. So the reason we need 12 % for the average person, the average income earner, is about kind of that outcome. Because the outcome that you get at the far end is not going to get you to that kind of minimum or moderate standard unless it's at more or less that level. sorry minimum will be fine but moderate if you're looking for an average earner to get that moderate level you need to be roughly saving about 12 percent across your life's lifetime and it's unlikely i think we'll see there's a state pension review as far as the pensions commission but it's unlikely that i think the state pension level will increase uh significantly to kind of uplift people and we've got an aging population uh fewer working and therefore the kind of ability for that kind of smaller cohort of workers versus the kind of older demographics to kind of carry that, it's going to be really challenging.

33:57So it's going to be up to individuals and their employers to contribute more. Yeah, the OBR pointed to how expensive the scheme had been versus their expectations. And in a short time, it's like 15 billion a year already, right? Yeah. I mean, some of that's obviously a really high inflation that we've had post the pandemic, those kind of 10 and 15 % inflation years, which have that compounding effects which are pretty unusual but the 2.5 doesn't help either because in the years where it shouldn't be going up it does right you say you know it's unlikely that it will rise do you mean around the triple lock is that what you're saying because that guarantees it rise right yeah so the triple lock i think we'll continue i think maybe the base level um and where that sits um in the system i think you know the state pension is the backbone of most people's pension provision at the moment.

34:46And we've still got, essentially, because we've kind of had this historic difference in provision in the UK. So you've got, you know, a lot of people now coming to retirement are going to be retiring with a mixture of state pension and a mixture of final salary DB pension. And DB pension traditionally pays out more than current savings within DC. And so that group of people coming into retirement are going to be in one position. But the people who are kind of coming behind in kind of combinations of gen x and gen z need to be saving more typically if they're in dc only than they are presently under kind of minimum standards in order to get to a decent level of retirement but the pressure on them to fund the state pensions of the people ahead of them is greater because they're a smaller population base yeah and this is the big societal kind of trade-off that we need to work through as part of the commission and a part of the state pension review because uh it is going to be you know we know at the moment that kind of younger cohorts are facing kind of higher household costs some of the things that you might have traditionally done in your life are starting later people are buying their first house later they're having a family later uh you know whether they're having one or two children it's all changing student loans etc there's a lot of pressure on these groups um and i think the question is, how do we find the right balance to make sure that people are actually getting a good outcome at the end of it?

36:11Because there aren't any other kind of really good choices, because ultimately, an individual will have to contribute, the employer will have to contribute, or the state will have to contribute, and the state will be back on taxpayers. And we know that if the kind of people get to retirement and don't have enough income, they're going to have to fall back on the state. And that means higher welfare bills. So the incentive there for government to actually act as part of this commission is quite high. You think that they have that incentive and the will and they're not just focused on the next election, say?

36:47Well, I think they've said as part of the launch of the commission this time around that they're looking for the commission to report for retirees up until 2050s. They've also said AE contributions aren't rising during the course of this parliament. so that kind of is a little bit of a breathing space in terms of this electoral cycle but we'd like to see kind of certainly from our position by the mid-30s those levels of pension savings increasing towards 12 % kind of across the board you know potentially with some additional flexibilities that we don't have now but by then you need to be starting to make those changes otherwise you know you're going to just piling up problems for later.

37:28Yeah and I think one of the hardest things for people of our age is uncertainty around the long-term viability of pension structures state pension is is this social contract but then everyone seems to think well i'm not going to get that by my age and i think long-term reassurance around it would be great if they just came out and said 30 of the average salary is where we want state pension to be long term and we're going to make sure that it hits at that kind of level and then you've got to go get the other 30 odd percent for your private at least everyone knows where they stand then but right now we feel like we have this triple lock that just ratchets it up at this the at the detriment to the younger generations who feel like i'm never going to get that yeah so i think that will come under questioning as part of this state pension and any government that does who's going to jump on that sword well i think there's a question about you know once the government has got the the commission has looked at essentially the kind of savings gap that exists in the system and kind of evidence that.