Executive summary

But pension inequalities have many dimensions, and there is also growing evidence of an ‘ethnicity’ pension gap. Whilst good data is much less readily available, a series of relatively recent studies has found that people who are part of Britain’s ethnic minority communities typically have significantly lower pensions than their White British counterparts.

This report is on the intersection between these groups.

In this research, we aim to provide an in-depth understanding of how women from different communities make financial provision for later life. In doing so, we aim to gain a deeper understanding of how far pension disadvantages apply to women or members of ethnic minorities, and how far there are specific issues for women from particular communities.

The report is based on more than 12 hours of focus groups, undertaken during the Summer of 2025. The research was facilitated by Opinium Research and involved contributions from more than fifty women across a range of ethnic minorities, with separate groups for older and younger women. The focus groups were followed up by short individual interviews with six participants whose comments are also featured in this report.

Whilst the motivation for this report was about tackling pension disadvantages, our research findings offer some glimmers of hope.

In particular:

• The relative disadvantage faced by women from ethnic minorities could be starting to fall. This mainly reflects generational differences, as younger women generally have higher levels of qualification and are much more likely to be in paid work and aspire to financial independence than previous generations.

• Although there is a generally low level of knowledge about pensions and some mistrust, there is also considerable hunger for information and explanation. There was clear evidence that if these women felt they knew and understood better how pensions worked and what they could deliver, that they would be more likely to engage.

A very wide range of issues was raised during the course of these focus groups, but we were able to identify five key themes:

• A generational shift, with younger women much more likely to be – and expect to be – financially independent, relying much less on other family members, compared with previous generations;
• A relatively low baseline level of knowledge, understanding and trust around pensions;
• A desire for accessible information about pensions and savings;
• Evidence of a wide range of strategies being used to save for later life, well beyond pensions;
• Strong hopes and dreams for later life, but anxiety about ability to attain those goals.

These conversations give us room for cautious optimism about the potential for reducing the pensions disadvantage experienced by women from ethnic minorities in Britain. Although pension understanding and knowledge were low, this did not generally reflect a lack of interest or willingness to engage. Instead, our research has highlighted some of the types of information and forms of communication that might be more effective in reaching these women than traditional approaches.

More fundamentally, although employment rates amongst women from ethnic minorities remain lower than for white British women, the gap has closed considerably in recent decades, and this is likely to feed through into improved retirement savings outcomes in years to come.

The challenge for the pensions industry is to recognise the diverse characteristics and lived experience of the members of modern workplace pension schemes and to meet their very real hunger to know more about pensions. We believe that the opportunity is there for the story told by successive reports on pension gaps to change, and we commit to being part of that drive for change.