People with a DC pension are divided when it comes to confidence about their future comfortable retirement, according to new research.

While 52% said they were confident they will have a comfortable retirement, 48% said they were not confident.

Meanwhile, the study showed that young people were more confident than older folk, but confidence across age groups increased for those closer to retirement.

Despite that, a third of people set to retire within two years (32%) said they were not confident it would be a comfortable one.

The research from pension consultancy Barnett Waddingham surveyed more than 2,000 UK workers paying into a workplace DC pension.

Currently, just over a third of Brits have a DC pension, compared to about a quarter with a DB scheme. But with only 4% of DB pension schemes open to new members, within a decade, most workers will be in a DC scheme. 

Barnett said it is a cause for concern that almost half of workers with a DC pot aren’t confident they’ll have a comfortable retirement.

Young savers were most confident, at 71% of 18-24 year olds and 61% of 25-30s. Confidence then steadily declined, with the least confident age group being 51-55, the cohort approaching pension freedoms age. Just 42% of this cohort were confident. After 55, confidence jumped back up to 50% or higher. 

The research showed that confidence was relatively static for people with more than 25 years of work ahead of them pre-retirement, at which point confidence started to rise in older age groups. By the point of five to 10 years of work left, 58% of people were confident, rising to 71% of those with three to four years of work ahead. That dipped to 65% of one to two year planners, and rose again to 73% of people retiring within the year. 

Meanwhile, 4% of people with a DC pension said they never expected to retire at all.

Mark Futcher, partner and head of DC pensions at Barnett Waddingham, said: “In a rare glimmer of good news, people are currently more confident about retirement the closer they are to it, meaning something is going right.

“But there are two key areas for concern. First, a third of people planning to retire in a couple of years are going into that period of their life without confidence that they’ll be able to live comfortably. And most people who are confident are such because of other wealth, property, or private and DB pensions. This is not much use to most young workers, who tend to have low savings, lower prospects of buying a house, and solely DC workplace schemes.”

He said there are two major solutions that policy-makers must pursue. The first is to improve the auto-enrolment system, by widening who it includes and increasing minimum contributions - including auto-escalation of contributions with pay rises and after career breaks.

Mr Futcher said: “The aspiration should be to build a DC system that generates employees a comfortable retirement, without needing further wealth to survive.”

He said the second solution would be to hone in on the cohort approaching retirement, and work to ensure that people are able to confidently visualise their income and lifestyle after employment,

He said: “That will require significant innovation and a much more robust at-retirement framework, specifically working to increase confidence in older workers that a comfortable retirement is possible for them. With political upheaval likely in the months ahead, it’s critical that the industry pushes for consistency of focus - long-term pensions cannot be a short-term political football.”

• The research was conducted by Censuswide for Barnett Waddingham with 2,002 UK employees with a DC pension, aged 18+ in March.