Archie Pritchett: The challenge is making sure that renewal reaches the roots, not just the canopy.
In any other industry, 2026 would be cause for celebration. A landmark bill heading for Royal Assent, a long-promised digital platform nearing launch and a government commission preparing to publish its first findings on whether the system actually works.
The UK pensions landscape is undergoing its most significant structural overhaul in a decade. Yet if you asked most people under thirty what changed this year, the honest answer would be, "nothing that I noticed".
This is what might be called an institutional spring – a season of renewal that is reshaping the architecture of the pension system while the people it is supposed to serve remain largely untouched by its warmth.
The reforms arriving in 2026 are real and, in many cases, overdue. But there is a growing risk that progress is measured in legislation passed and systems connected, rather than in confidence built and outcomes improved. For the system to truly come to life this spring, renewal has to reach further than the institutions it's beholden to. It has to reach the people it's actually meant to be for.
The scale of change underway is significant. The Pension Schemes Bill, the statutory connection deadline for the pensions dashboard, the revived Pensions Commission and the arrival of multi-employer collective DC schemes all mean that, by any measure, this is a year of serious momentum in the pensions industry.
The difficulty is that the people who most need these reforms are the least likely to know they exist. Standard Life's 2025 Retirement Voice report found that 59% of Gen Z believe simply being auto-enrolled means they are saving enough for retirement – yet only 13% say pensions are among their biggest financial priorities.
This confidence is not grounded in understanding. A Smart Pension survey of over 2,500 workers found Gen Z rated themselves the most pension-confident generation, yet Money and Pensions Service research shows only 10% pass basic pension literacy tests.
The Pension Policy Institute's 2025 report on Gen Z found that less than half believe the state pension will still exist when they retire, with an average expected eligibility age of 71.
The system is building better plumbing – but despite their confidence in auto-enrolment, the people for whom the system is being built don't believe the water will ever arrive. This confused confidence in auto-enrolment despite mistrust of state provision is symptomatic of the larger point here – the clear disconnect between the progress happening in the pensions industry and the level of education Gen Z has around retirement.
Even where awareness exists, affordability presents a hard ceiling. Standard Life's report found more than a third of UK workers have considered pausing workplace pension contributions due to financial pressures, rising to 38% among Gen Z and millennials.
Financial wellbeing among 18-to-24-year-olds is the lowest of any age group and, according to a report by Nudge Global, the proportion of people feeling hopeful about their financial situation has fallen sharply – from 60% in 2024 to just 29% in 2025. These are not people who can be nudged into saving more through better fund governance or dashboard connectivity. The reforms of 2026 may improve what happens to money once it is inside the system, but they do little to encourage many young workers to put it there in the first place.
This is precisely why the Pensions Commission's interim report matters so much. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that almost 40% of private sector employees saving into a DC pension are on course to miss adequate replacement rate benchmarks - with current minimum contributions of 8% of qualifying earnings well below the 12–15% most experts agree is necessary for a secure retirement.
The Commission has been asked to consider whether minimum rates are adequate and whether auto-enrolment should be expanded to the self-employed and younger workers.
If it treats these questions with the urgency they deserve, spring 2026 could mark the beginning of a different conversation about pensions. If not, this year's reforms will be remembered as impressive engineering on a bridge that too few people can afford to cross.
What would it take for this institutional spring to become a personal one? The dashboard, if designed well, could be transformative - but only if its interface is built for the digitally native, not just the professionally engaged. Phased contribution escalation, tied to earnings growth so that increases are felt gradually, remains one of the most effective levers available. Broadening auto-enrolment to include gig workers and lowering the age threshold below 22 would bring millions more young people into the system when compound growth can do the most work. And CDC - pooling risk collectively - speaks directly to a generation sceptical of going it alone.
Spring is supposed to be the season when things come to life. In 2026, the pensions system has its best chance in a generation to do exactly that - not just in the boardrooms where reform is designed, but in the pay packets and pension statements where it is actually felt. The institutions are revitalised. Now the challenge is making sure that renewal reaches the roots, not just the canopy.
Archie Pritchett is a member of Gen Z and an operations associate at PensionPay
