Here is David Brooks , finding his way back to the part pension experts find hardest to accept, that most of us do not want to have something that takes a lot of effort.

This is a sister blog to the one published earlier this morning which compares the complexity of private pension statements to statements about our state pension and concludes there is no consistency and (with one exception) no attempt to tell us how much pension our pots will give us.

This article is printed out below.

The Retirement System is still built for the few, not the many

David Brooks

Head of Policy at Broadstone Corporate Benefits Ltd

January 7, 2026

What do most people really want from their pension when they stop working? For millions reliant on defined contribution (DC) pots, the honest answer is: clarity, stability, and a route through complexity they never asked to manage.

Yet the industry continues to frame the debate as though every saver is eager – or even able – to make sophisticated decisions about investment risk, longevity, sequencing, tax and portfolio strategy at the point of retirement.

The gap between this assumption and the lived reality of most savers has become too vast to ignore.

The industry narrative assumes a level of capability most people simply don’t have

Since the introduction of pension freedoms, DC savers have been “empowered” to cash out, draw down, or buy an annuity in whatever arrangement suits them. In theory, this flexibility is admirable. In practice, the system has delivered something different.

Evidence shows the majority do not, and cannot, navigate this complexity

Research from the Pensions Policy Institute shows that, without structured support, many savers drift into what it calls “informal defaults”:

full cash withdrawals, often triggering unnecessary tax, or
leaving their pot invested in accumulation because they do not know what else to do.
This is not “freedom of choice”. It is a system that does not adequately account for inertia and lack of confidence.

A wider assessment of the retirement income market shows that existing products and support structures are failing to meet the needs of ordinary savers, particularly those with small or fragmented pots. The result is a market that works best for the already‑informed and already‑confident.

The sector still designs for the vocal minority, not the silent majority

Listening to much of the industry discourse, you’d think the typical DC saver is:

financially literate
comfortable managing investment risk
able to pay for regulated advice
inclined to compare product charges, glidepaths and longevity models
confident in sequencing risk and withdrawal planning
holding multiple asset pools beyond their pension

But this portrait describes only a small, well‑served cohort.

The majority have modest pot sizes, limited financial resilience, low confidence, and very little appetite for complex choice architecture. And yet the industry still largely builds strategies, tools and “solutions” for the type of retiree who turns up to webinars, reads white papers, or actively seeks paid advice.

Structured pathways will not be perfect — but the alternative is potentially worse

There is legitimate debate about how “default‑like” retirement pathways should be. They must not be blunt or overly prescriptive. They must reflect uncertainty and they must allow opt‑outs.

But the idea that a lightly guided, flexible, safety‑net structure is somehow more harmful than the current landscape simply does not align with evidence.

Master Trust research shows providers are already preparing more structured decumulation solutions because they recognise that as pots grow, the absence of any framework will drive worse outcomes. Blended drawdown‑plus‑annuity options, post‑retirement glidepaths and enhanced guidance tools are now widely under development across the trust sector.

This is happening not because trustees lack imagination — but because the data on saver behaviour leaves them little choice.

The hardest issue: multiple pots and fragmented data

Even if the industry designs the best possible retirement structures, one unavoidable reality remains: most people now reach retirement with several small pots spread across multiple providers.

This makes designing any kind of coherent retirement pathway profoundly challenging. Providers lack visibility across schemes, making it difficult to judge sustainable income levels, assess longevity risk, or calibrate drawdown strategies. The PPI has highlighted this data fragmentation as a major barrier to effective retirement support.

Until consolidation becomes mainstream or dashboards provide genuinely usable integration, any retirement pathway, however well‑designed, risks being only a partial solution.

But that does not mean the answer is to offer nothing.

If the system keeps designing for the confident few, it will keep failing the many

For too long, the retirement system has been built around the needs, preferences and capabilities of a small, affluent, highly engaged minority. The people with advisers. The people with multiple sources of wealth. The people who enjoy financial decision‑making.

But most savers are not like that, and a pension system that pretends otherwise is not empowering but negligent.

People do not need a jungle of complex choices. Instead, they need a stable foundation, protection from known behavioural pitfalls, and a system that recognises how real humans actually behave.

A well‑designed, flexible retirement pathway – not prescriptive, not paternalistic, but grounded in evidence – is not a threat to choice. It is a way of ensuring that choice does not become a barrier to good retirement outcomes.