NEST Publishes Research into Understanding of Pension Terms

The National Employment Savings Trust (NEST) has published the results of its initial research into the understanding of current pension terms amongst its target audiences.

This has enabled them to develop a phrasebook of key terms, phrases and principles aimed at helping future NEST members to better understand pensions. The phrasebook can be downloaded from NEST Corporation's website. To continue the work, NEST has also set up a plain-speaking forum and published an interactive game to encourage people to carry on the conversation about pension terms.

Minister for Pensions, Steve Webb said: "I welcome NEST's phrasebook as a big step forward in making pensions easy to understand. Employers and workers alike find pensions very complicated. As we move forward with radical reforms to automatically enrol people into workplace pensions it is vital that we use clear and simple language to make that process as straightforward as possible."

Helen White, Director of Life and Savings at the Association of British Insurers said: "We are facing a pensions crisis in this country with many people not saving enough for a comfortable retirement. In 2012 automatic enrolment could begin to revolutionise pension saving and see millions more people saving for their retirement. It is crucial we use the next 12 months to get people ready for this huge change and we welcome the work NEST is doing."

This work was developed over 14 months and helped identify some best practice principles for the words and phrases NEST should use. The key advice was to:

• keep it simple, but don't patronise
• be open and honest and don't baffle with jargon or mystify with complexity
• use clear signposting and provide clarity on what needs to be done next where appropriate
• provide step-by-step instructions where possible.

Download the phrasebook at www.nestpensions.org.uk/plainspeaking