Isio helping Coastline Housing pilot 'living pension' project

Investment consultancy Isio is supporting Coastline Housing with its implementation of a new ‘living pension’ project. The housing association is already a living wage employer, and is now piloting a plan to improve its support of employees into their retirement.

Coastline Housing is an independent Cornish charitable housing association owning and managing 5,000 homes. The organisation is one of the fastest growing associations in terms of building affordable properties, and is committed to building over 1,200 new affordable homes between 2021 and 2025, to help people struggling with housing. In the last 12 months alone, it invested £34.5 million in developing homes for Cornwall.

The organisation is also committed to investing in its own staff, though. As an employer, it has already signed up to the Living Wage Foundation’s campaign to ensure that every one of its colleagues receives at least the minimum salary required to live on. And building on this commitment, the group is now looking to extend that offering to its benefits too.

In support of the newly launched Living Pensions campaign, Coastline Housing has announced it will become one of six employers to pilot a benchmark for the rate of saving needed to yield an acceptable standard of living in retirement. UK consulting firm Isio is working with Coastline Housing to help implement this.

Hannah Tripp, Head of People & Culture at Coastline Housing, said, “Joining this Living Pensions pilot will help us in our aim to be the best employer in the South West by offering a fair and equitable total reward package. Internal research highlighted how recent recruits and younger colleagues were benefiting less well from our previous matched contribution pension scheme. By being part of this pilot scheme we have already started engaging with a wider variety colleagues in planning for a future that meets their needs.”

A recent study by Isio found that eight-in-ten workers are not saving at levels which are likely to deliver an acceptable standard of living in retirement. As the cost-of-living crisis means workers have to prioritise meeting needs now over meeting needs later, employers need to do more to enable sufficient pensions contributions.

Paul Moffatt, a Director at Isio who is working with Coastline Housing on the trial, noted, “Everyone needs to be confident that what they earn during their working life will also help provide for them later on. Isio has been working alongside the Living Wage Foundation on developing the benchmark and are delighted to be supporting Coastline in its ambition to provide an acceptable retirement income. The association has repeatedly demonstrated a strong commitment to its employees and the implementation of a new flexible and inclusive benefit offering in line with the Living Pension principles will greatly benefit the team and Coastline’s wider community.”

With some 16 million workers currently not saving enough to meet the cost of living beyond their working lives, good planning now could help avert a pensions crisis in the not-so-distant future. The Living Pension benchmark sets a rate of pension saving needed, totalling the contributions made by workers, employers and the government, to provide employees with a decent standard of living once they retire.