One giant leap to the pension then, a pastiche of nothing, just a hunk of history and tradition. But however much some circles cling to our prized truth of the vitality of private pensions, they have been cruelly sullied, denigrated and thrown to the back of public consciousness.
 
To get retirement saving back on the agenda then, is it time we thought about embracing a more positive pastiche? A rethink of the pension?

A good starting point could be the ISA, a pastiche maybe of PEPs and TESSAs but a definite improvement that far outstripped its precursors. At once smart and flexible, ISA's arrived in 1999 with the sound of D:REAM's Things Can Only Get Better a faint murmur.

ISAs flexibility and open-to-everyone spirit found a home in the public zeitgeist, just as now we find growing uncertainty over our futures in increasingly uncertain times. Good pensions are more important now than ever, but its perception as outmoded and irrelevant, at a time when its clearer than ever the road to retirement won’t be paved with gold, is hard to shift.

So what does a pension pastiche look like? Does it make the concession to allowing (partial) access to money early, to cover all of life’s bases? Clearer links with other products like ISAs? Does it even rebadge itself and shake off the ‘pension’ tag altogether?
 
The jury's out on force-feeding the pension under automatic enrolment, but without decisive action the figures in the latest Visions report – 35% of people thinking they are too young to worry about retirement saving – are trends that won’t be coming down by end of the decade.  

If automatic enrolment arrives with a whimper plan B may be something altogether more familiar.

Jimi Piggot, Communications Development Executive, Friends Life*

*The views expressed here are strictly those of the author and not Friends Life