Employers Must Provide More Financial Education

In a recent piece of research by Wealth at Work it was found that 68 per cent of employers provide some kind of financial education for retirement planning, most likely in relation to their pension scheme arrangements.

Most shockingly, it was also found that only 38 per cent of all employers surveyed provide general financial education for their staff members.

With such a large number of employers offering various insurances as part of their employee benefit package it is surprising that so few offer any form of education in relation to these products, such as life, health and income protection cover.

These findings open up the question of whether independent financial advisers (possibly in the form of employee benefits brokers or individual insurance brokers) should step up to the mark and offer formal financial education services to company employees.

In the survey it was found that 76 per cent of employers believed that the provision of this type of education would increase over the next few years. All 100 firms listed on the FTSE 100 market index (the largest publicly-listed companies in the UK) agreed that the provision of education on financial matters would increase.

The survey producer, Wealth at Work, argued that there is a significant movement to the provision of increased education over and above that already provided for retirement planning.