They are all at it. In the past few weeks, Scottish Widows, Prudential, HSBC, LV= and Aviva have published detailed reports on Britain's pensions landscape. But they needn't have gone to all that effort because they all conclude what we already know – that many of us are on course for a woefully inadequate retirement income because we are not saving enough.  The difference between my scheme's transfer value (the amount Coutts would give me to leave it) and the size of pension on the open market I would need to generate the same income as my Coutts pension is threefold.  I have no intention of transferring out.  The baby boomer generation are probably in the clear – it is the so-called Jam generation that could be in the mire. This is the generation of forty somethings that grew up listening to the Jam, such as David Cameron (apparently).  Many have missed out on final salary schemes and are in so-called defined contribution schemes.  Unlike final salary schemes, employees take on all the risk with DC arrangements – the vagaries of the stockmarket, the amount they and their employer contribute and the prevailing annuity rate when they retire. A move to a DC scheme would lead to a more inferior pension than even a watered-down final salary scheme.  My concerns on DC schemes were neatly summed up by Nigel Aston at PensionDCsions a few months ago. He reckons that workers are being thrown "a hospital pass" from companies closing final-salary schemes.  He says: "Employers may feel that they have divested themselves of onerous final salary uncertainties but there has not necessarily been a corresponding acceptance of these unknowns by the membership. The sponsor has unwittingly executed a hospital pass. The unfortunate member (employee) may be about to be heavily tackled by the weighty forwards of volatility – volatile capital markets, volatile interest rates and volatile longevity expectations."  How much worse off people will be under DC arrangements will not become clear until the Jam generation start to collect their gold watches. Given contribution rates and given the investment performance of many DC funds, it could be a bitter pill for them to swallow.
You will need a pension pot worth half a million pounds to secure a retirement    income of &pound;20,000.